*8*
SATURDAY, 25TH JUNE, ROMSEY ROAD POLICE STATION, WINCHESTER-12:30 P.M.
DI Maddocks and his team had put together a substantial amount of information about Jane Kingsley in the short time they'd had, but had discovered nothing about Meg Harris or her parents. "At the time of Miss Kingsley's car crash, a couple of PCs went out to talk to her parents," he told Cheever. "The stepmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Kingsley, was tipsy and offered some vitriolic comments about Leo and Meg. They were both bastards but Meg was a snake in the grass and had set out to steal Jane's boyfriends since they were at Oxford together." He looked up. "BT can't help us. At a rough estimate, Wiltshire has over five thousand families called Harris living in it. If we had the father's initial it might help, or a profession even, but you say Sir Anthony doesn't know what her father was called."
"No," said Frank Cheever with rather more cynicism than was his wont. "Despite his enthusiasm for her as an alternative daughter-in-law, he seems to know remarkably little about her."
Maddocks eyed him curiously. Well, well, well, he thought, times they are a-changing. "I've put two of our guys onto tracing Meg's next of kin through the university," he went on, "but then there's the other problem that Harris may not be her maiden name. I still say our quickest route is via the flat in Hammersmith, so Fraser and I are going up there this afternoon."
"Understood. What about Jane Kingsley?"
"Okay, after the Landy murder-" Maddocks pointed to some papers on the Superintendent's desk. "That's as much as we've managed to get hold of on the case. It seems pretty comprehensive and there's a phone number you can call for an update. I guess you missed the Kingsley connection because she was calling herself Jane Landy in those days. Anyway, within weeks of her discharge from hospital following her treatment for depression, she negotiated an extremely favorable sale of his gallery and invested the lot in a photographic studio in Pimlico. She bought it out, lock, stock, and barrel-premises, equipment, and goodwill. Until then, she'd been working part-time as a stand-in photographer when regulars didn't show." His voice took on a note of reluctant admiration. "She appears to have turned it into a success. Under the old management it was a run-of-the-mill enterprise, dealing in portraits of the local bigwigs' families, friends, and pets; under Miss Kingsley's management it's become a favored studio for promotional work-actors, pop stars, fashion models, magazines. She's earned quite a name for herself in the trade."
"Who's running it at the moment?"
Maddocks consulted his notes. "A chap called Dean Jarrett. He's been with her from the beginning. She recruited him through an ad in the newspapers, asking for samples of work with a view to employment. She had over a thousand applications, interviewed fifty, and selected one. The word among professionals is he's brilliant and devoted. I got Mandy Barry to phone through and ask whether appointments and bookings were being honored with Miss Kingsley in hospital, and the receptionist, one Angelica, was bullish and convincing about the studio's continued commitment. Loyalty to the boss was deeply felt and not feigned, according to Mandy."
Cheever nodded. "What else?"
"The house in Richmond was bought by Landy in '81 with an endowment mortgage of thirty thousand. On his death, the endowment paid off the mortgage and the house became Miss Kingsley's. She has shown no inclination to sell it. She gets on well with Colonel and Mrs. Clancey, who live next door, and is well regarded by other people in the road. She lives quietly and unostentatiously and, bar the occasional appearance of her father's Rolls Royce, does not draw attention to herself. Interestingly, nobody referred to Landy at the time of Miss Kingsley's traffic accident, although some of them must have remembered him, but they were very ready to talk about Leo Wallader. The general view is that no one liked him very much and that he behaved badly, but Richmond police were left with the impression that her neighbors were more put out about missing a wedding at Hellingdon Hall than they were about Leo's shenanigans."
"What about other boyfriends between Landy and Wallader?''
"Only what we've gleaned from the gossip columnists. There've been two or three, but nothing lasting more than six months. Mind you, Wallader didn't make six months either. She met him in February and he was dead by June. Bit of a whirlwind romance, considering the marriage was scheduled for July."
"What was the attraction?"
Maddocks shrugged. "No idea, but Colonel Clancey said it was very clear to him and his wife that Jane was having cold feet about the wedding, even if it was Leo who called it off. Claims he can't understand why she would want to top herself when he left."
"Any ideas?"
"Only the obvious, that she killed them herself or witnessed the killing and then suffered a similar breakdown to the one she'd had at the time of Landy's death. She's pretty damn weird, that's for sure. I mean, according to what we've found out, her favorite backgrounds for photographic shoots are cemeteries, derelict factories, and graffitied subway walls." He took a folded page that had been ripped out of a magazine, from his pocket. "If you're interested, that's her most famous photograph to date. It's that black supermodel standing in front of a filthy tiled wall with every obscenity you can imagine scrawled all over it."
Cheever spread the sheet on his desk and examined it. "Fascinating," he said. "She's quite an artist."
"Well, I think it sucks, sir. Why put a beautiful woman against crap like that?"
"Where would you have put her, Gareth?" asked the other man tartly. "On a bed?"
"Why not? Somewhere a bit more glamorous, anyway."
The Superintendent frowned. "It's a statement. I think it's saying that real beauty is incorruptible, never mind how profane or ugly the setting." He pinched the end of his nose. "Which is interesting, don't you think, in view of the ugliness of Landy's death? I wonder when she started using backgrounds like this in her work. There's something rather moving about the triumph of fragile human perfection over a wasteland of mindless filth."
Maddocks decided the old man was going gaga. It was only a creased fashion photograph, not the Mona Lisa.
HELLINGDON HALL, NEAR FORDINGBRIDGE, HAMPSHIRE-12:30 P.M.
Miles Kingsley shook his mother angrily, then pushed her back onto the sofa. "I don't believe it. My God, you're such a stupid cow. Why can't you keep your bloody great mouth shut? Who else have you told?" He glared across at his brother, who was skulking at the far end of the drawing room, feigning an interest in the leather-bound books his father had bought by the yard when they first moved into the Hall. "Your neck's on the line too, you little shit, so I suggest you wipe that smirk off your face before I slap it off."
"Sod off, Miles," said Fergus. "If I had any sense I'd never have listened to you in the first place." He kicked a Chippendale chair. "It was your idea, for Christ's sake. 'Foolproof,' you said. 'What can possibly go wrong?' "
"Nothing has gone wrong. You'll see. Just a little more time, and we'll be free and clear with a sodding fortune."
"That's what you said last time."
RAMSEY ROAD POLICE STATION-12:45 P.M.
Frank read the documents on his desk relating to the Landy murder, then dialed the contact number Maddocks had given him. DCI Andrews had been involved from the outset.
"The case was effectively closed at the end of '85," he said down the wire from Scotland Yard, "when Jason Phelps was put away for the Docherty murders. Remember him? Clubbed an entire family to death for twenty grand on the instructions of Docherty's nephew. They both got four life sentences. We tried to persuade Phelps to confess to the Landy killing, because it was a carbon copy of the Docherty murders, but we never got a result. There was no question he did it, though, and if we could have got him to spill the works, we'd have nailed Kingsley. He was the one we wanted."