“Anyway, Jerry,” Grice said after a couple of moments, “how was it? How’d it go?”
Grabianski stared back at him stonily.
“No, I mean when you made her the proposition, how did it go down?”
“Lloyd Fossey, sir.” Millington had met Resnick in the small, sloping car park and was walking close alongside him, into the station. “Last time I saw him, he was living in the middle of a terraced street out in Sutton, stone-cladding on the front wall and a van parked out front with his own name misspelt on the side panel. Now he’s got a detached house out towards Burton Joyce and, according to the bloke across the road, he’s driving an F-reg. Audi.”
“Come on in the world,” said Resnick, starting up the stairs.
“Moved into this place nine months back, not far short of three hundred thousand.”
I wish someone would offer that for mine, thought Resnick. Half of that. Anything.
“No matter if he’s mortgaged up the wazoo,” Millington pushed open the door to the CID office and stood aside to let Resnick pass through, “he’s got to have found a lot of cash from somewhere.”
“And you don’t think he acquired it servicing security systems?”
“Electronic surveillance consultant, that’s what Fossey introduced himself as when he moved in. Looks as though he’s using his own place for demonstrations. Lift a crocus out of the flower bed and you’ll be up to your ears in alarm bells.”
“Crocus?” said Resnick.
“Unnatural this year, sir, the weather. False spring.”
Right, thought Resnick, I’ve known a few of those too. At the back of the room, Patel had paused in typing up a report and was trying to catch his eye. Divine, chair tilted back on its rear legs, was listening with the telephone to his ear, a bored expression on his face.
“And Fossey?” Resnick asked.
“Honeymoon, sir. Expected back the day after tomorrow.”
“Canary Islands?” suggested Resnick. “Turkey?”
Millington shook his head. “Benidorm.”
“At least it’s not Skegness.”
“Close your eyes, sir, difficult to tell the difference. So they say.”
Resnick knew that Millington drove his wife and kids each summer to Devon, each autumn a week with his wife’s parents somewhere north of Aberdeen. The Christmas she had gone off on a three-city tour of Russia, Millington had stayed home and dressed the tree.
“Sir,” said Patel.
“A minute,” said Resnick, holding up a hand, fingers spread wide.
“I got in touch with a few security firms,” Millington continued, “to see if anyone knew what Fossey was into. Sounds as if what he does is chat people up, goes round their homes makes a lot of fuss about the need for a personalized system and more often than not brings in someone else to fit it up.”
“Taking his fee off the top.”
“Naturally.”
“Nice work if you can get it. And if the systems you’ve recommended don’t keep the bad boys out, more work is what you won’t get.”
“Agreed,” said Millington. “But what about the places he gets a good look at and where he isn’t taken on as consultant afterwards?”
“Can we check that out?”
“Difficult until I can get hold of Fossey, find a way of looking through his records. Supposing he keeps them.”
“Worth checking all the security firms, see what contact he’s had with them?”
Millington nodded. “I’ll get someone on it, sir. It’s 137 to 143 in Yellow Pages. Maybe Naylor when he’s through collating the stuff from the insurance companies.”
“And you’ll arrange to meet Fossey on his return?”
“Flight BA435. I’ll make sure he’s welcomed back.” Millington turned away. Patel was still hovering; Resnick pointed towards Divine, still half-listening to an interminable call. “Rees Stanley?”
“Right pissed off, sir. No snow. Came back two days early, like we said.”
Resnick acknowledged the information, beckoned Patel.
“I ran into the PC who went out to the Roy house, sir, the one who took Maria Roy’s statement.”
“Ran into him?”
“I made it seem that way, sir. I thought it was best.”
“And?”
“He thought there was something not quite right at the time. Tried to tell Inspector Harrison, but the inspector wasn’t interested. Told him to write up Mrs. Roy’s statement and forget about it.”
Grabianski had ejected the Roys’ holiday movie and removed it from Grice’s sight. Not that Grice would have bothered watching it a second time: all those goose pimples, all that sagging flesh was enough to give him the heaves. It was common knowledge that where sexual attraction was concerned, one man’s meat was another man’s poison, but what Grice had seen was enough to turn him vegetarian.
Grabianski, who had left that morning like the original good-humor man, was as sullen as a lovesick calf. Sapped. So much for the exchange of bodily fluids. He’d always known that Samson getting his hair cut was a symbol for something else.
“What did she think of the idea? I mean, d’you think she went for it?”
Grabianski really was in a bad way. He hadn’t as much as opened a bird book in hours.
“You pointed out to her the disadvantages of not paying up?”
“Yes,” said Grabianski without conviction.
“You had to be doing something all that time apart from … All right, okay, no offense. No need to get on a spike about it. I just need to be certain.”
“So be certain. I laid it out.” (Grice suppressed a snigger.) “As we planned. Street value of a kilo of cocaine is 24,000 and rising. Back in their hands for twenty, no questions either way.”
“What did she say?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“They’ve got as much chance of raising 20,000 in forty-eight hours as England has of winning the next World Cup.”
“She’s a soccer fan?”
“All right, she didn’t say that, not exactly. It was what she meant.”
“Stick to what she said.”
“What she said was, I could sit here till hell freezes over before we could come up with that much money.”
“And what was your response to that? Aside from crossing yourself.”
“I didn’t cross myself.”
“Get to the point.”
“She reckons her husband is stupid for agreeing to hold the stuff in the first place. She says, right now he’s scared out of his wits, looking over his shoulder all the time, terrified the guy’s going to think he’s been double-crossed and come after him. Her Harold’s frightened this dealer’s going to cut his face, break both his legs, you name it, kill him.”
“How’s she feel about this?”
“Maria? She thinks it’s terrific. Especially the latter.”
“She wants her old man killed?”
“Slowly for preference, but she’d settle for a bullet in the back of the head.”
“Christ! What’s he done to her?”
“Recently? Not a lot.”
“Great! She wants him dead so’s you and her can waltz off into the sunset.”
Grabianski got up from where he was sitting and picked up his binoculars, walked to the living-room windows.
“Put those down and listen to me. It’s dark out there. All you can see are street lights and bathroom windows.” He touched Grabianski on the arm. “That’s it, isn’t it? An afternoon of shimi-sha-wobble and she’s packing a suitcase.” He pointed at Grabianski’s crotch. “What you got down there, anyway? A guided missile?”
“It’s not what you’ve got …” Grabianski began.
“I know,” finished Grice, “it’s what you do with it. Lectures on the joy of sex I can do without. Where I get most of mine, I just lay back and leave it all to massage lotion number nine. Like the masseuse, I’m more interested in the money.”
“She’ll tell him, try and get him to go along. She promised me that.”
“I’ll bet. Crossed her heart and hoped her beloved Harold would die.”
“No, she’ll tell him straight.”
“You think he’ll make an offer?”
“Wouldn’t you?”