(f) He may feel he is underrated, or cheated by some failure in his own career. [Choice of famous victims suggests he envies people in the limelight]
(g) He is well up with media gossip and may even have inside information. [He knew when Summers was back from the Med]
Not enough to be of use to the police, unfortunately. It’s still too theoretical. He’s little more than a concept, some way short of being an individual. What Jimmy needs from me are notes that will pin him down as an individual. Age, appearance, living arrangements, daily routine. Oh dear, I’m still a long way from that degree of detail.
The way forward must be to look more closely at the choices the killer has made. Why pick Axel Summers, by all accounts a charming, well-respected and talented man? What is it about the others that singles them out for slaughter? Is it only that they are so well known?
I definitely need to know more about Porter and Walpurgis. How do they spend their time when they’re not working? Do they own houses in the country, like Summers? What are their backgrounds, their interests, their politics (if any)?
A few minutes ago I phoned Jimmy. Glad to say he sounded pleased to hear from me. You can tell straight away when a man wants to back off (don’t I know it, from past experience), and he doesn’t. But this was strictly business: I was putting my case for a meeting with Matthew Porter. It caught Jimmy unprepared and at first he dug in his heels and said he couldn’t risk it and anyway he didn’t want Porter being troubled. This young man is under enough stress already, and so on. Gently steering him towards the worst possible outcome, I made the point that while Porter is alive we have the chance to question him about people he may have crossed and threats he may have received. If we’d had that opportunity with Axel Summers, we’d have a list of suspects.
He saw the sense in this. The police have put all their resources into investigating the murder and providing elaborate protection for Porter and Walpurgis. Nobody has sat down with either of them and gone through their recent history looking for possible enemies. So Jimmy took the point. He said he’d need to talk to the high-ups. He promised to get back to me.
(Later, in bed) Nothing yet from Jimmy, but I’ve had Ken on the mobile wanting to start over, giving me the hard sell about how he’s missing me and his cat was sick yesterday and he almost pranged the car and he really loves me and can’t face life without me. What a wimp. I know if I give him the slightest encouragement he’ll be ten times as hard to get off my back. So I bit the bullet and told him I was seeing someone else-which gave him a seismic shock and showed him in his true colours. This guy who really loves me and can’t face life without me called me a slag and a whore and lots of other disgusting names. I just said, ‘Grow up,’ and switched off. Closure-I hope. We’ll see. I was very shaky, though, and poured myself a neat whisky-something I never normally do.
Keep thinking of things I should have said, like the cat isn’t the only one who’s sick.
I hope I sleep all right.
Better news. A message on the answerphone from Jimmy saying I should meet him in the coffee shop at Waterloo Station at 2.30 today. And I should erase the message after listening to it-real cloak and dagger stuff which was as good as saying he’d fixed the meeting with Matthew Porter. Brilliant.
I got to the station early and sat on one of those tall stools drinking an Americano. I’d put on the style for this, the dark red number with the split skirt. Black pashmina and matching tights. My Prada shoes. It’s not every day you get to meet a top sports star. I got some looks.
Jimmy showed up dead on time in a gorgeous light grey suit I hadn’t seen before. Purple shirt and matching tie with flecks of yellow. Cool. He kissed me on the cheek and steered me to the taxi rank. It was like being in a movie. I’ve never been at the sharp end of a crime investigation. In the cab, I sat close to Jimmy and slipped my hand under his arm and squeezed it. He smirked a little, but of course we were on a serious mission, so things didn’t get any more intimate than that.
He told me we were going to a safe house. Special Branch have a number of addresses in London where they protect VIPs under threat of terrorism, or informers changing their identities. Jimmy phoned the house from the taxi to say our ETA. The cab stayed south of the river, through Kennington and Brixton, and ended up at the war memorial in Streatham High Road, where Jimmy tapped the glass and told the driver to put us down. Nobody takes a taxi to the front door of a safe house. We walked for ten minutes or so through the backstreets, me beginning to think I should have worn something less conspicuous, but no complaint from Jimmy.
The house is in as quiet a road as you’re likely to find in London, old Victorian buildings with high chimneys and sash windows and tiny front gardens. I noticed a video camera quietly rotating under the eaves.
We didn’t need to knock. The front door was opened by an unsmiling honcho in a tracksuit and we stepped inside without being frisked (disappointing) and were shown straight into a back room where Matthew Porter, a young man in a green polo shirt and white jeans, was sitting in an armchair watching the racing on TV. On the floor beside him was a heap of unopened letters. He turned his head briefly to give us a glance, but didn’t get up or shift his feet from the coffee table in front of him, just pointed at the screen with the can of lager he had in his left hand. Never mind who we were, he was going to watch the finish of the race. A young man with attitude, I thought. So we stood tamely watching the horses race it out. The minder rolled his eyes as if to say he’d had plenty of this already, and then left the room.
The race result, when it came, didn’t cause much excitement. Only a yawn-and even then Porter ignored us until Jimmy gave my name and explained my reason for wanting to meet him. This achieved some eye contact, no more.
Case-hardened by all those seminars with grouchy students, I wasn’t going to take any of this personally, was I? I launched straight into my questions. Obviously, he’d been told about the murder and the note found at the scene, so I began by asking him if he’d ever met Axel Summers. He shrugged and continued to look bored, and I thought at first he was going to play dumb until I stopped and went away, but then he muttered something about always meeting people and not remembering them unless they were players. Trying another approach, I asked if he watched DVDs or videos and when he said he said there wasn’t much else to do in hotels I told him he might well have watched one of Summers’ films. This didn’t excite him one bit. I wasn’t doing too well.
I probed gently into his background, school, family and so on, and by degrees he loosened up. He was more comfortable talking about his start in golf. He must have done this many times in press interviews. His father, an amateur with a low handicap, had taught him to play when he was eleven. Their house backed onto a golf course in Broadstairs and he would practise shots at the nearest hole, the eleventh, early in the morning before anyone else was about. The club professional gave him lessons. At fourteen he was allowed to play a round with his father and made such an impression that the club rules were changed for him to become a member. A year later, he won the club championship. His progress since was phenomenal. He’d left school and turned professional at eighteen and started winning minor tournaments right away. Agents were keen to acquire him as a client and he soon had his own manager and sponsors and a regular caddie. His win in the British Open at the age of nineteen was what made him famous overnight. He told me all this in a deadpan delivery without conceit.
I asked if his parents still had a say in his career and he shook his head. They’d separated four years ago. His mother was now living in France with another man. His father was an ‘alky’. He said he didn’t want to talk about them. So who were the main people in his present life? His manager, Sid Macaulay, who looked after everything-his travel around the world, his interviews, his endorsements, even paid his tax. Girlfriends? He hadn’t time, he said, adding-with a smirk-apart from one-night stands. He was travelling most of the year-normally.