‘Are you sure he kept paper records?’
‘The son says that he did.’
‘OK, but his outgoing stuff, letters he wrote, emails he sent, there will be copies of these on his computer, surely.’
‘I’m sure there are. But the big problem is, it’s not here. Glover’s whole life, so Wilkie says, the originals of his books in various stages, his accounts, his photos, his music, was on a Dell desktop, with everything backed up on an external resource. Alice and I are looking at the computer now; the casing’s been opened and the hard disk’s been removed. There’s no sign of the back-up disk either.’
‘Who would want to do that? The daughter, the son?’
‘I don’t see that, Sammy. Why would they? Wilkie seemed totally shocked when we found this. He says that his father had three new works on the computer, and two of them hadn’t been delivered to his publisher. The way he sees it, this is a disaster. We did ask him where he’s been all afternoon, though. He said that he and Carol never went out of her flat from the moment we left them to the moment we returned. They spent most of that time fielding telephone calls from the media, so if we need to confirm their story it should be easy enough.’
‘Have you looked at Carol’s computer yet, at her dad’s secret email address?’
‘No. We came straight here.’
‘Then you better had. Call me on my mobile as soon as you have. Young Sauce and I are going out to Fred Noble’s place to interview Glover’s agent. She’s ready to see us, but before that, I’ll need to report this upstairs. If you’re convinced it wasn’t Wilkie and Carol protecting their inheritance, then it has to bring Mr Coben, Andy Martin’s mystery visitor, right back into the game.’
Twenty-nine
‘This is a pretty exclusive neighbourhood,’ said DC Sauce Haddock, looking along the terrace of substantial grey stone houses. ‘This writing game must pay pretty well.’
‘For some,’ Sammy Pye told him as he stepped out of the driving seat and closed his car door. ‘I have a cousin who’s trying to make a living at it. She’s had three books published, but she’s still teaching and not expecting to be giving up any time soon.’
‘Would I have heard of her?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘What does she write?’
‘Intense novels about women having a hard time.’
‘Ah. No, I probably won’t have heard of her.’ He looked at the number on a low iron gate. ‘Seven. This must be the house.’
‘Yes.’ The DI led the way up a pathway between two rose beds. As the detectives reached the front door, it opened to reveal Fred Noble. He was still dressed all in black, but the T-shirt he had worn earlier had been replaced by an open-necked shirt, and he had shaved.
‘Inspector,’ he began.
‘And Detective Constable Haddock,’ Pye continued; an introduction. ‘You didn’t meet earlier.’
‘Haddock, eh. You’ll have had all the “battered or breadcrumbs” jokes, I suppose.’
The young constable drew an imaginary line a few inches above his head. ‘Right up to there,’ he replied with a smile. ‘But if you think you know a new one, I’m all ears.’
‘That’s not something you should say too often. Come away in; June’s waiting for you.’ He opened a heavy panelled door, and showed them into a drawing room. Pye had a quick glance around, taking in a high fireplace with a mirror above the mantelpiece, sash-cord windows, with secondary glazing, and a ceiling cornice that was a work of art. He wondered how many books his cousin would have to sell to attain such a lifestyle.
The woman they had come to interview swung round slowly to face them, in a red leather captain’s chair, but she remained seated. She was middle-aged. . she and Glover might have been contemporaries, the DI surmised. . with expensively managed honey-blonde hair, not a telltale grey root in sight. She wore a trouser suit in a pale colour that might have been described as peach, over a tight white sweater that made no attempt to downplay a formidable bosom. And she was still clearly in shock. Her eyes seemed to be somewhere else as Fred Noble made the introductions, seated the detectives, then left to fetch a pot of coffee.
‘I didn’t know,’ said June Connelly, with a crack in her voice. ‘I thought it was funny that Ally hadn’t called me while I was on the train, but I supposed he must have been busy. I expected him on the platform when we got to Waverley, and even when I saw Fred waiting, it never occurred to me that there was anything wrong. Not until I saw his face. .’
‘We are very sorry to have to intrude, Ms Connelly,’ Pye told her. ‘We understand that your relationship with Mr Glover was more than just professional.’
She nodded. ‘Ally called us a New Age couple. We both had earlier marriages, him widowed, me divorced. . it’s Mrs Connelly, by the way. . and our arrangement suited us. Occasionally he would talk about moving down to London, but Carol and Wilkie, still being youngish and single, tied him to Edinburgh. My son Mike flew the coop a while back. He’s in America now.’
‘Did you ever think of moving north?’ Haddock asked.
‘That was never an option, the publishing industry being what it is.’ She paused. ‘But that’s only an excuse; I’m a Londoner, and I always will be.’
The DC was about to comment that his usual boss, DI Becky Stallings, had made the move for reasons that were more personal than professional, when Sammy Pye cut across him. ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ he asked.
‘I’m ready for anything that will help you, Inspector.’ As she spoke, the door creaked quietly as Fred Noble shouldered his way into the room, carrying a large tray. He poured mugs of coffee for each of them and then stood, eyebrows raised, as if waiting to be invited to remain in his own front room. The DI nodded, and he sat.
‘When was the last time you spoke to Mr Glover?’ Pye began.
‘Yesterday,’ she replied. ‘Yesterday afternoon. He called me to check on the arrival time of my train.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘Same as always. Cheery.’
‘As always, you say. So he hadn’t been concerned about anything lately?’
‘No, he’d been very up, excited even. He had a lot going on in his life; he had all sorts of new responsibilities as an MSP, he was getting to the end of the latest Strachan book. . that always pumped him up. . and then there was his new project. Actually, he was on such a high I was worried about him; he was overdoing things and. .’ She hesitated, and her eyes dropped to her lap. ‘To be honest,’ she continued, more quietly than before, ‘when Fred met me at the station, and I saw the expression on his face, my instant thought was, “My God, Ally’s had another heart attack; please let him be all right.” But then he told me that he was dead, and that you believed he had been murdered.’ Her eyes renewed contact with the inspector, locking on hard. ‘You really do think that?’
‘That’s what the pathologist says, Mrs Connelly.’
‘And I know him, June,’ Fred Noble interjected. ‘He’s the top man in Scotland, probably in Britain.’
‘So how did he die?’ she asked.
‘That’s information we have to keep to ourselves for the moment.’
‘You’re not telling anyone?’
Pye winced, involuntarily; she picked it up.
‘Nobody at all?’ she persisted.
‘The immediate family have been told,’ he admitted. ‘Mr Glover junior, and Miss Glover.’
‘What about Ed?’
Sharp, the DI thought, noting a subtle change of expression. ‘Yes, him too.’
‘But he’s a journalist.’
‘Something we found out after the event. It’s OK, though; there will be no leak from that source.’
‘You don’t know Ed Collins; I’m assured he’s a shifty young chap. Ally wasn’t at all keen on him, but he’s Carol’s choice, and he had to live with it.’