In fact, there was no bell, only a buzzer, with a camera above. He pressed and they waited, Haddock muttering, ‘One quick spray of a paint aerosol and that’s fucked.’
‘Smart people put a layer of cling film over the lens,’ the DI countered.
‘Yes?’ A male voice came from the speaker grille.
‘Police,’ the DS said, holding up his warrant card for inspection.
‘Put it closer to the camera, mate.’
He did as he was asked.
‘What brings you here?’
‘A murder investigation,’ Pye snapped, ‘so open the gate, please.’
‘I don’t know if I will. This family’s got no reason to like you guys.’
‘To whom are we speaking?’
‘Derek Drysalter.’
‘And this is your house?’
‘My wife’s and mine, yes.’
‘It’s also the registered address of Peter Hastings McGrew, a life sentence prisoner released on licence.’
‘So what?’
‘So have you any idea what “on licence” means? If not, then get the door open, or you’ll find out.’
‘Hastie’s not here.’
‘Doesn’t matter, open up. . please.’
The background crackle of the speaker stopped, and the light above the camera went out. A few seconds later the steel gate slid open, and the two detectives stepped into the grounds.
A long driveway led up to the house; by the time they reached the front door, it had been opened and a figure waited there, not a man, but a woman. Pye had done his homework and knew that, once, she had been a model; twenty years on she had retained a certain grace, but added two or three sizes, emphasised by the a black onesie that she was wearing.
‘I’m Alafair Drysalter.’ It sounded more of an announcement than an introduction.
‘DI Pye, DS Haddock.’
‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
‘Thank you.’
She stood aside for them and then ushered them through to a huge galleried living area, with a glass wall and two centred patio doors that opened out into a garden boasting a small swimming pool. It would have enjoyed a fine view up Blackford Hill, Haddock reckoned, but for a line of tall leylandii.
Derek Drysalter was waiting for them there, glaring as they entered. The former footballer had gained much more weight than his wife, and had given up the fight against male pattern baldness, shaving his remaining hair close to his skull. He was standing, but supporting himself on a Malacca cane with a silver handle.
‘Darling,’ his wife said, ‘I can handle this on my own. Unless these gentlemen want you here, why don’t you go and surprise Peri by picking her up from school. You know the bus from Mary Erskine can be a bind, and she does have the Olly Murs concert tonight. Is that okay, Inspector?’ she asked.
‘Yes, it’s fine by us,’ Pye replied, fixing his eyes on the man, and his cane. ‘Do you have a mobility problem, Mr Drysalter,’ he grinned, ‘or is that a weapon?’
‘My second knee replacement,’ he answered, unsmiling, ‘a month ago. I’m only just back on my feet.’
So you won’t have been walking upstairs at Caledonian Crescent, Haddock thought, far less helping to carry a body down in a trunk.
‘I’m okay to drive, though,’ Drysalter added, as he headed towards the hallway, with a careful shuffling gait. ‘My car’s an automatic.’
‘Now,’ his wife said, briskly, as he left, and as they took seats on a long curved sofa facing the garden, ‘what’s all this about? A murder inquiry? Really, guys, I thought those days were long gone. Hastie did what he did and he paid the price, more than he should have, in the circumstances.’
‘Who says we’re here to talk about your brother?’ Haddock shot back.
‘What else would it be?’
‘It could be a couple of things,’ Pye said. ‘For example, there’s the matter of your father’s death. That was investigated at the time and no conclusion was reached.’
‘Yes there was,’ she exclaimed. ‘The procurator fiscal decided that it had been a tragic accident.’
‘Actually, he didn’t. He decided that accidental death was a possibility. Alongside that, he had no solid evidence to proceed against anyone. I read the investigation summary before we came here. The established facts were that your father’s agency carers left him asleep in his powered chair and went off to the kitchen for a break. When they came back they found both him and the chair in the hydrotherapy pool. There was nobody else in the house at the time.
‘Perry Holmes having been what he was, obviously the carers were treated as suspects, but they had impeccable records, and the stuff that the investigators found in the kitchen, dirty plates, et cetera, tended to support their story. The building was secure, and there were no signs of forced entry; the caring agency worked in shifts, and there was only one set of keys to the premises. In fact there were only two sets in all and you had the other one.’
‘Fine,’ Alafair snapped. ‘And I was at home when it happened, miles away from Dad’s place. Derek wasn’t that long out of hospital after his hit-and-run, and we had friends for dinner to celebrate, one of Derek’s Scotland teammates and his wife.’
‘High-profile witnesses, no doubt about that. So, a machine malfunction was the only feasible solution, since your father was completely paralysed and couldn’t have driven himself into that pool even if he had been suicidal. . which he wasn’t since on the day of his death he’d called his bookie and put ten grand on the favourite for a big race that was due to be run in three days’ time.’
Pye paused. ‘I can see why the fiscal went with the possibility of an accident. And I can even see why the investigating officers were happy to accept that conclusion. But there were far more who weren’t, including a not long retired detective, Superintendent Tommy Partridge.
‘He spent much of his career trying to put your dad in jail, and he wrote a book about him after he was dead. I’m in the process of reading it. He claimed there was an anomaly. He claimed that your father’s house had security that included cameras all around the place and movement sensors. A month before he died, you reported that it was faulty and that you’d shut it down. The firm that monitored it tried to make an appointment to repair it, but they couldn’t come up with a date that suited you.’
‘So?’ she retorted. ‘Derek was in hospital at the time. He was my top priority.’
‘Tommy Partridge thought that a man called Tony Manson was your top priority at the time, although he never put that in his book.’
‘Then how would you know that?’ she snapped.
‘Mr Partridge told me,’ the DI replied. ‘I spoke to him this morning. He has a theory and I’m going to put it to you. He believes that when Hastie, your brother, went to prison, he was afraid that since he wasn’t around to manage the criminal side of your father’s business, and protect him in the way that your Uncle Alasdair had done, he was vulnerable, both to his rivals, and to the police.
‘With asset seizure looming on the horizon, he decided that the old man had become a liability, and that he had to go. The swimming pool accident, so the theory goes, was his idea and you set it up, probably through your gangster on the side, Tony Manson. Old Tommy spent years trying to prove that, but the fiscal didn’t want to know.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Alafair sneered.
‘Me neither,’ Pye admitted, ‘but if Tommy had discovered what I now know, that you paid your father’s previous carer, Vanburn Gayle, a serious sum of money as a so-called bonus and found him a place on a nursing degree course down in London, then the prosecutor might have taken a very different line.’
He was staring hard at the woman as he finished. After a while she met his eyes.
‘Then,’ she whispered. She continued, more loudly. ‘That was then and this is now. Vanburn was paid a legitimate bonus from a legitimate source. Anyway, why would I pay him off?’
‘Because he would never have left your father alone?’ Haddock suggested.