‘Alibis,’ said Karlsson, wearily. ‘I don’t know. He could have got out of bed. And aren’t there high-speed trains from Manchester?’
‘Two hours and five minutes,’ said Yvette. ‘What about Jasmine Shreeve?’
Karlsson gave a sour laugh. ‘From the sound of the TV programmes she used to make, I’d give him a free pass for conning her.’
‘House Doctor wasn’t that bad,’ said Munster.
‘It bloody was,’ said Yvette. ‘Looking at people’s psychology from their wallpaper.’
‘It was more of a guilty pleasure.’ Newton was in a good mood today, positively bouncy.
‘Enough of the TV reviewing,’ said Karlsson. ‘However good or bad she was, she seems to have got off lightly. Maybe he really liked her, maybe he hadn’t got around to conning her or maybe he conned her in a way we haven’t found out about yet. And then there’s the possibility that he conned the wrong person, someone we don’t even know about, perhaps someone in the past, and they caught up with him and taught him a lesson.’
‘That’s a lot of maybes,’ said Yvette.
‘And our main witness is insane and delusional. And our other main witness is dead.’ He took another bite of his sandwich. ‘None of this is good. But the question is: what do we do now?’
There was a long silence in which the only sound heard was of sandwiches being chewed.
‘Well?’ said Karlsson.
‘All right,’ said Yvette. ‘There are actually lots of things we know.’
‘Go on.’
‘We know that he earned his money by conning rich people. We know he slept with Aisling Wyatt and that he was probably going to blackmail Jasmine Shreeve. He fleeced Mary Orton and tried to make her change her will. As you say, there are lots of motives here – although the Jasmine Shreeve motive appears to be like the one for the Orton sons, a motive she didn’t yet know about. We know he had a shed-load of money that someone stole – or he put somewhere else, and we haven’t managed to find out where.’ She paused. ‘Yet. We also now know how he found his victims.’
‘Do you?’ Newton leaned forward. ‘I didn’t know about this.’
‘Sorry,’ said Karlsson. ‘I wasn’t aware we had to keep you up to date with all the details of our cases.’
‘They all used the same bank?’ guessed Newton. ‘Or they all shopped at Harrods?’
‘The second guess is warmer. They all bought very expensive items made of wood from a company where Poole briefly worked. When he left, he took the list of clients with him, presuming – rightly, it seems – that they all had money to spare.’
‘That’s clever,’ said Newton.
Karlsson thought he was enjoying himself far too much. ‘Unfortunately, it doesn’t get us much further on.’ He turned to Yvette. ‘What do you think we should do next?’
‘We lean on Aisling and Frank Wyatt. Separately.’
‘Lean on?’ said Karlsson. ‘Meaning?’
‘Give me some time alone with Frank Wyatt and put the following scenario to him: you confronted Robert Poole with what he’d done, you had a row, there was a struggle, you killed Poole by mistake, panicked, dumped the body. If he owns up to that, the CPS might well go for manslaughter, possibly even a suspended sentence if the judge is sympathetic.’
Karlsson thought for a moment. ‘What about the missing finger?’
‘Maybe there was a ring that would identify him.’
‘So he cut the finger off in a panic?’
‘That’s how we’ll put it to him.’
‘And what about the money that was cleared out of Poole’s account?’
‘Poole could have done that himself to hide the trail.’
‘And it’s now where?’
‘Buried somewhere. Lost forever. Or in an account abroad.’ There was another silence. ‘Well, you never clear up everything.’
‘And Janet Ferris?’
‘Suicide,’ said Yvette, promptly. ‘While the balance of her mind was disturbed.’
Karlsson gave a grunt. ‘All right. We pull the Wyatts in for questioning. Before that, we dig up everything we can find about them.’ He looked at the desk diary. ‘Wednesday morning,’ he said. ‘First thing. Chris, you go and check out alibis for both of them before then.’
‘I think it’s Jasmine Shreeve,’ said Newton.
There was a silence and a slow smile grew on Karlsson’s face. ‘What?’
‘Sorry,’ said Newton. ‘Ignore what I said.’
‘Well, we’ve already got a psychotherapist working on the inquiry. Why not a management consultant as well? Why do you think it’s Jasmine Shreeve?’
‘She’s got more to lose than the others. I’ve seen interviews with her. She still has a hopeless fantasy that she’s going to have a comeback. If she was humiliated by a conman, it would ruin any chance of that. And anyone who’s seen her on TV knows how needy she is. If she felt she had been betrayed, she could have done anything.’
‘Thank you for that,’ said Karlsson. ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t send you off to interview Jasmine Shreeve for us. I’ll talk to her myself. And if your theory turns out to be right, then Yvette and Chris will cook you a slap-up dinner.’
‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’ said Yvette.
‘That wouldn’t be much of a reward.’
‘And what’s Dr Klein going to be doing?’
‘I think she was on the verge of dropping out.’
‘Why?’ said Yvette. ‘Did she get fed up?’
‘It looks like she took it out on that photographer.’ Munster grinned at Yvette, then caught Karlsson’s eye and stopped grinning.
‘She told me about it,’ said Karlsson. ‘It wasn’t her, it was two of her friends.’
‘It’s not very professional,’ said Munster. ‘She gets into the papers. Then there’s a fight with a photographer and she’s in the papers again. It’s like having Britney Spears on the inquiry.’
Karlsson shook his head. ‘I think she felt too involved. She felt she’d let Janet Ferris down.’ He screwed up the sandwich wrapper and tossed it at a bin. It bounced off the rim on to the floor. ‘It’s not as if we’re doing such a good job ourselves.’
There was a knock on the door and a woman put her head round. ‘There’s someone to see you, sir,’ she said apologetically.
Lorna Kersey was in her mid- to late-forties, Karlsson guessed, with cropped brown hair and round glasses. She was wearing no makeup, but had chunky earrings and several rings on her small hands. She was wrapped in a voluminous orange cardigan and was wearing snow boots, but she still looked cold. Her husband, Mervyn, was a small, plump man with silvering hair who looked older than her. He sat upright and still in his chair and pressed his hands together, as if he was praying. Every so often, Lorna would reach out and touch him gently – on his shoulder, his arm, his thigh – to reassure him, and he would glance towards her and smile.
‘I don’t want to waste your time,’ she said.
‘I understand it’s about Robert Poole. I’m in charge of the case and would be interested to hear anything you have to say.’
‘Well, that’s the thing. The man we know isn’t called Robert Poole. He might be someone different.’
‘What is he called?’
‘Edward Green.’
‘Go on.’
‘It was the poster. It was so like him.’
‘And this man, Edward Green, you haven’t seen him for a while?’
She grimaced. ‘It’s to do with our daughter.’
‘Hang on. Your daughter’s not called Sally, is she?’
‘Sally?’ She looked bewildered. ‘No. She’s Beth. I mean, she’s Elizabeth really but she’s called Beth. Beth Kersey.’
‘Sorry. Go on, then.’