“It’s been a very lonely bed without you in it,” I said.
“Oh, Ned,” she said, stroking my leg. “Let’s really try and make it work this time. I’m so tired of all this.”
If only, I thought. We had said this all too often in the past. False hope had burned in our breasts on so many occasions only to be dashed each time by seemingly unstoppable events.
“Yup,” I agreed, ruffling her hair. “Let’s really make it work this time.”
But first I had some unfinished business to deal with.
I left her to dress and titivate herself in front of her dressing-table mirror while I went downstairs to call the coroner’s office.
“The Thames Valley Police are still apparently objecting to a burial order,” I was informed by one of the officials. “You could try calling them and asking. It may be an oversight on their part.”
“Thank you,” I said. For nothing.
I called Thames Valley Police headquarters and asked to be put through to Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn.
“Ah, Mr. Talbot,” he said, coming on the line.“The bookmaker.” His tone was instantly unfriendly.
“Yes, Chief Inspector,” I replied with far more levity. “And just why, exactly, don’t you like bookmakers?”
“My father was addicted to gambling,” he replied with surprising anger. “That, and demon drink, they stole my childhood.”
I was astonished that he’d told me. But it explained a lot.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“If you were really sorry, you’d give it up,” he said.
“But that wouldn’t make much difference, now would it?” I said somewhat sarcastically. “There are lots of other bookmakers.”
“One at a time,” he said. “One at a time. All you bookmakers are scum.”
Again, I was surprised by the passion of his outburst, but I could tell that whatever I might say would make no difference to his firmly entrenched opinion. His usually analytical, problem-solving, keen detective’s mind clearly couldn’t appreciate the lack of logic in his thinking on the issue.
“Can I go ahead and bury my father?” I asked by way of changing the subject. “The Coroner’s Court says that the police still have an objection to the issuing of a burial order. What is the objection?”
“Er,” he said, “I’ll have to get back to you.”
I reckoned that he only needed more time in order to think up a new excuse.
“Good,” I said, and gave him my home telephone number. “I will be in all day today, and I want to get on and make the arrangements.”
“Right,” he said almost as if he was distracted. “And Mr. Talbot?”
“Yes.”
“You still haven’t provided us with an e-fit of the killer.”
“Do you still need it?” I asked.
“Yes, we do,” he said. “There has been little or no progress with this case.”
Probably, I thought rather ungraciously, because the victim had been with a bookmaker. At the time, Chief Inspector Llewellyn had been convinced that I’d been the killer, but the numerous statements of the champagne revelers in the parking lot had all agreed that I hadn’t. And, much to his annoyance, they couldn’t all be wrong.
“I’d love to come in and do an e-fit,” I said. “I would have expected you to have chased me before this. It must surely be a bit late? Any potential witnesses who saw the killer will have forgotten him by now.”
“We already have some e-fits from the other witnesses in the Ascot parking lot, but, to put it mildly, they are not very consistent. Anything you can add may be helpful.” But don’t bank on it, his tone implied.
“Right,” I said eagerly. “When and where?”
“Any Thames Valley police station will do, provided it has the right staff and an e-fit computer.”
“Which one would be the nearest to Kenilworth?” I asked.
“Banbury, probably,” he said. “I’ll find out and call you back.”
He did so about five minutes later.
“It’s fixed for two this afternoon, at Banbury,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be there. And is there any news about the burial order?”
“I will inform the coroner that we have no further objection to the issue of such an order,” he said formally. Was it my imagination or was Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn warming slightly? “But I still don’t trust you, Mr. Talbot.”
Yes, it must have been my imagination.
“I’m sorry about that, Chief Inspector,” I replied. But I suppose if I were honest, I would have to admit that he had good reason not to fully trust me. I wondered if I should ask him about a certain Mr. John Smith, but I decided it might complicate things and lead to rather more questions than I would be easily able to answer, so I didn’t.
Next, I again used my father’s mobile to call Paddy Murphy.
“Well, hello,” he said cheerfully, again with the emphasis on the final “o.” “I didn’t think I would have heard the last of you.”
“What’s the name of the man with his eyes too close together?” I asked, getting straight to the point.
“I don’t have his real name,” said Paddy.
“What name do you have?”
“Kipper.”
“Kipper what?” I asked.
“Just Kipper,” he said. “But it’s only a nickname.”
“Have you ever met him?” I asked.
“I haven’t rightly met him, but I believe I saw him once.”
“In Ireland?” I asked.
“Hell, no,” he said. “In England. Your dad was that frightened of him. Said he was a strange fellow, bit of a loner.”
If my father was as frightened of this Kipper as Paddy made out, why had he kicked out at him and told him to go to hell in the Ascot parking lot?
“What else did my father say about him?” I asked.
“He thought he was being paid too much for what he did,” said Paddy. “Moaned about it all the time, your dad did.”
“But how did he know how much this Kipper was being paid?” I asked.
“I don’t rightly know. Something about him bringing his share over from Australia,” Paddy said. “Your dad claimed that he should have been getting as much as Kipper ‘for delivering the merchandise,’ as he put it. Then he laughed, and said they’d find out soon enough that they should have been paying him more.”
“Who were ‘they’?” I asked.
“Search me,” he said.
“And what did he mean by saying they would find out soon enough?”
“I don’t know that either,” he said.
Paddy Murphy wasn’t being very helpful. He was suddenly backtracking. Perhaps he was now regretting having told me anything. I wondered if what my father had said about them finding out soon enough was to do with him stealing the microcoder.
“You told me that this Kipper worked for an insurance company,” I said. “Which one?”
“Well, to be sure, I don’t rightly know,” he said.
“Is the company Irish?” I asked. “Or English?”
“I don’t know that either,” he said. “All your father told me was that Kipper’s job was as an investigator looking into horse deaths. Maybe I just assumed he was with an insurance company.”
That wasn’t very helpful either.
However, he went on to tell me a few interesting things about the two missing counterfeit RFID chips that could turn out to be very helpful indeed, not least that a horse that had supposedly recently died from colic had, in fact, been switched using the fake RFIDs with a much less valuable animal, which had then been killed for a large insurance payout. And he indicated that the horse had been a winner at the Cheltenham Steeplechase Festival the previous March.
I remembered reading something only the other week in the Racing Post about a horse dying from colic.
“What was the horse’s name?” I asked him.
“No, no,” he said. “I’ve told you too much already.”
Indeed he had, but he had been boasting about his cleverness.