Хилари Боннер - Wheel of Fire

‘You are being very frank, Miss Fairbrother,’ said Vogel, who genuinely had not expected so much information to be so freely offered.

‘I am afraid everything I have just shared with you will become public knowledge in the very near future unless I — and I really believe it is going to be down to me — can find a way of sorting out this mess and come up with a plan to save Fairbrother’s,’ responded Bella. ‘And that is going to take some doing, I can tell you, detective inspector.’

‘I see,’ said Vogel.

Bella Fairbrother took in a deep intake of breath and let it out very slowly.

‘It’s all just so awful,’ she said eventually, showing the first sign of any emotion since Vogel had met her. ‘I can’t believe that Blackdown Manor has gone. It was such a beautiful house, full of beautiful things. I grew up there, of course. And I had a very happy upbringing too, until my father decided to chuck my mother out and move in that tart he later married. After that it was sheer misery, probably why my brother turned out the way he did, too.’

Bella Fairbrother sounded bitter. And angry again.

‘Miss Fairbrother, you are clearly not sorry that your father is dead, you have made no secret of that,’ said Vogel. ‘I wonder if you actually desired his death.’

Bella Fairbrother laughed briefly. It was a laugh without mirth.

‘Not enough to kill him, or to have him killed, if that’s what you are suggesting, detective inspector,’ she said.

‘I would not dream of suggesting any such thing without appropriate evidence,’ said Vogel deadpan.

‘No, well, in any case, I had known for some time what a mess he was going to leave behind him. And, I also knew that my father would die sooner rather than later of natural causes. Whether or not I wanted him dead is irrelevant. I only had to wait a few months. In any case, I am a senior executive of a major bank, Mr Vogel, and I have every reason to believe that when the present chief executive takes retirement within the next year or so I shall be offered that position. I am only stepping in to assist Fairbrother’s at this stage because I have been asked to do so by the board, because I have a greater knowledge of how my father ran things than anyone else And I do not want Fairbrother’s to go under, obviously. It is my family heritage.’

‘Yes indeed,’ murmured Vogel. ‘I wonder, speaking of heritage. Have you been in touch with your brother at all? We need to speak to him too, of course.’

‘I don’t see why, he’s not been near our father for years. Not even been in this country for years either, as far as I know.’

‘Miss Fairbrother, I am not at all clear who or what is going to benefit from your father’s death. You paint a picture of possible collapse as far as the bank is concerned. But as a rule, when a wealthy man is murdered, excepting crimes of passion, there is usually a financial motive. That is why I need to speak to your brother, and to any other surviving family members.’

Bella Fairbrother sighed.

‘All I have is a mobile phone number for Freddie,’ she said. ‘He does call me occasionally, and me him. But at the moment it’s just ringing out. I’ll give you the number.’

Bella reached into her bag for her phone.

‘Thank you,’ said Vogel. ‘Of course, your father’s death, and the fact that it’s a suspicious death, is already in the press and on the net. Your brother is bound to hear of it, so he will surely get in touch with you then. Or even the police.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ said Bella Fairbrother. ‘My brother is not like other men.’

George Grey arrived at London’s Paddington station at about the same time Bella Fairbrother reached the Mount Somerset Hotel.

He’d bided his time at Musgrove Park hospital until a moment when there seemed to be little going on in his ward, and few medical staff around, before making his move.

His clothes, which were in a bag in his bedside locker, were steeped in blood and had been partially shredded during the repeated stabbing he had sustained. They were of little use to him. Not if he wished to be as inconspicuous as possible.

His shoes were also in the cabinet, spattered with blood, but otherwise undamaged. He had removed them and, carrying them in one hand behind his back, along with his wallet and phone, made his way along the central corridor dividing the rows of individual rooms which now made up the bulk of the patient accommodation at the Musgrove.

There was a nursing station at one end of the corridor, but the sole nurse sitting there had been busy at her computer, and in any case, even if she had seen George, he’d hoped she would merely assume he was on his way to the toilet.

The doors to most of the rooms stood open. George peered inside two or three before seeing what he wanted to see. The male patient inside was hooked up to a drip and to a PCA — a patient-controlled analgesia, probably morphine — pump, and he looked as if he’d been making good use of it. He lay on his back, eyes shut, mouth open, snoring heavily. George entered the room quietly, opened the patient’s bedside cabinet as softly as he could, and inside found exactly what he was hoping for: the man’s clothes, neatly folded. There was a pair of jeans, a polo shirt, a V-necked sweater and a lightweight jacket made of some kind of shiny beige material. George wrinkled his nose in distaste. He was, by nature and when he could afford it, quite a natty dresser. Normally he wouldn’t be seen dead in a jacket like that. Under these circumstances, he was phenomenally grateful for it.

He’d bundled up the clothes, tucked them under his arm and continued along the corridor to the toilet. His luck held. The nurse he’d noticed earlier still did not look up. In any case, he reminded himself, she had no reason to be suspicious. He didn’t think she’d been on duty for long. She probably had no idea that the police had just visited him, and that he didn’t have any clothes of his own that were even remotely wearable.

Once in the toilet he had removed his hospital issue gown, which he stuffed into the waste bin, in case its early discovery might attract unwanted attention, and dressed in the other man’s clothes. He’d discarded the underpants — he really couldn’t wear another man’s underpants — and pulled on the jeans carefully over his wounded and bandaged legs. George Grey was a small man. The patient whose clothes he had stolen was clearly much bigger. Better that way than the other, thought George. Fortuitously there was a belt in the jeans. George pulled it tight and then rolled up the bottoms. The shirt and the jumper were a good two sizes too big. The unattractive jacket hung loosely from his thin shoulders. George was grateful for anything. He put his wallet in the hip pockets of the jeans, and his phone in the top pocket of the jacket, and exited the toilet carefully, looking to the left and to the right, before concluding that the coast was clear, and heading for the stairs at the far end of the corridor to the nurse’s station.

Two doctors, talking animatedly, had emerged from one of the rooms right in front of George, who had looked down at the floor, avoiding the slightest chance of eye contact. He needn’t have worried. The doctors took no notice of him at all.

He’d left the hospital without a problem and picked up a taxi from the hospital rank to take him into Taunton town centre. He found a cash point and took out £400, which just about emptied his current account. He’d been given the obvious instruction not to leave a paper trail, so he wouldn’t be able to use his credit cards for a bit. The police would know he had started off in Taunton, obviously, so he was giving nothing away by drawing cash there. He then bought a pay-as-you-go phone in the Vodafone shop. His injured leg and shoulder were throbbing consistently. He knew he wasn’t well enough to be out and about, far from it, but he had no choice. There was a chemist in the high street, where he acquired co-codamol, the mixture of codeine and paracetamol which he thought was the strongest pain killer you could buy over the counter, and a bottle of Night Nurse, the knock-out cold remedy he reckoned would help him to sleep that night. If he got a chance to sleep.