Stuart Pawson - Chill Factor

The team, plus a few reinforcements from HQ CID, reassembled at eight in the small conference room and there were gasps of disbelief when Mr Wood told them about the developments. After his pep talk I split them into two groups and appointed two sets of control staff, as if the murders were separate enquiries, and sent the troops back out on to the streets. Priorities were the backgrounds of the three leading players and their relationships with each other. The neighbours would be given their opportunity to dish the dirt, so that might throw up something, and we needed the post-mortem results desperately. I told the Latham team to reconvene at three and the Silkstone team at four.

We could hold him in custody without charging him for twenty-four hours, and then ask for extensions, but we’re supposed to charge a prisoner as soon as is practicable. We decided to do him for a Section 18 assault, that’s GBH with intent, purely as a holding charge, and let the CPS lawyers decide at their leisure whether to go for murder or manslaughter. He appeared in front of a magistrate that morning and our man explained the seriousness of the offence. It’s not necessary to present any evidence at this stage. The magistrate obligingly remanded Silkstone into our custody for seven days while we completed our enquiries. After that period he would appear again and hopefully be committed to appear before the crown court at sometime in the remote future. We booked his solicitor, Prendergast, for eleven a.m., when the fun would begin.

Dave and I made a return visit to Silkstone’s house at Mountain Meadows. The sun was shining after a shower as we turned into the development, and it looked good. Several of the gardens had weird trees with twisted branches and dangling fronds, like you see in Japanese watercolours, and pampas-grass was popular. There were two panda cars outside The Garth and blue “keep out” tape stretched across the driveway.

The PC in charge showed me the visitors’ book and entered our names in it. I saw that the undertakers had called at six a.m. to take the body away, and a reporter from the Gazette had been tipped off by a friendly neighbour. We stepped over the tape and walked down the drive.

It looked different in the daylight. Allowing for the Silkstones’ crap taste, it looked highly desirable. Everything they had was expensive, top of the range, and they had everything. We stood in the kitchen, where we’d stood with such different feelings a few hours earlier, and took it all in. The wind chime gave a single, hollow, boing but I reached up and disabled it before it could run through its repertoire. There were Toulouse-Lautrec prints on the walls and a rope of garlic hanging behind the door.

“Not bad,” Dave admitted. From him, that’s an Oscar.

I sniffed the garlic, then felt it. “Plastic,” I said. “No wonder it didn’t work.”

“Work?”

“It’s supposed to keep evil at bay.”

He looked at me without turning his head, and said: “Er, listen, Charlie. I wouldn’t put that in your report if I were you. One or two people have been saying things about you, recently…”

The sitting room was a surprise. With its two leather chesterfields and dark wood it looked more like a gentlemen’s club than a room in a suburban house. The fireplace was polished stone, complete with horse brasses, and a photograph of the householder took pride of place above it. A beaming Silkstone was standing next to a much taller and slightly embarrassed man who looked remarkably like Nigel Mansell, former World Formula 1 champion.

“He moves in fast company,” I remarked.

“Golf tournament,” Dave said, which was fairly obvious from the single gloves, silly trousers and the clubs they were leaning on. “Probably a charity do, or something.”

“Right. What do you think of the room?” The carpet was plain blue and vertical blinds covered the windows. There were no flowers or frills, no Capo di Monte shepherd boys — Alleluia for that small mercy — and not a single pot plant. The wallpaper was blue and cream stripes, edged in gold, on all four walls.

“It’s a bit austere,” Dave remarked, turning round in a circle. He paused, then said: “The wife wanted me to put one of them up.”

“One of what?”

He pointed. “A dildo rail.”

I said: “It’s called a dado rail,” not sure if I’d fallen into a trap.

“Is it? I’m sure she said dildo.”

“Maybe you misunderstood.”

“Sounds like it.”

“C’mon,” I told him. “Let’s go upstairs. That’s where the story of Tony and Margaret begins and ends.”

The path we’d pioneered the night before was designated with blue tape so we stayed with it, although it wasn’t necessary. In the bedroom little adhesive squares with green arrows on them indicated items of interest that were invisible to my eyes. They were scattered randomly over the carpet near the bed, and concentrated around the disturbed surface of the duvet. Dave bent down and examined the area.

“Doesn’t look like blood,” he announced, straightening up.

“Other bodily fluids,” I suggested. The SOCO had probably found spots and splashes by using an ultra violet lamp or Luminol spray.

Next door was the woman’s room, all done in pink and lace, with a dressing table crowded with the things some ladies need to apply before they can face the world. She wore Obsession perfume and Janet Reger undies. A wedding photograph, similar in style to the one in Latham’s room, stood on the dressing table but pushed to the back, behind all the jars and bottles and aerosols. It was lightly covered with powder either from her compact or left by the fingerprint experts. In it, Silkstone was wearing a morning suit and his wife a traditional white dress. They were a handsome couple and it was impossible to date this one, unlike Mr and Mrs Latham’s.

The husband had his own room. It was furnished in a mock tartan material that looked pretty good and the bookcase was filled with coffee-table manuals about cars. We had classic cars, the world’s fastest cars, the most expensive cars, Ferraris, Porsches, and so on. There were yearbooks about the Grands Prix going back about ten years and a collection of Pirelli and Michelin calendars for a similar period. They were all big glossy books, heavy on pictures, light on words.

I found his reading books on the bottom shelf. They were by people like Dale Carnegie and Mark McCormack, and had titles such as How To Sell Crap To People Who Didn’t Know They Needed It; and What To Do With That Second Million. When this is over, I thought, I could do worse than read one or two of these. Or perhaps even write one.

There was a framed photograph of Silkstone on the wall behind the bed, and another of Nigel Mansell, autographed, on the facing wall. Silkstone was posing beside a Mark II Jaguar and looked about twenty. It was a snapshot, blown up to poster size, and was badly focused, but the numberplate was legible. He had a faint blond fuzz on his head, like a peach, which for a young bloke was seriously bald. Dave joined me as I was staring at it.

“Not as nice as your Jag,” he said.

“It’s not, is it.”

“Ever regret selling it?”

“Mmm, now and again.” I turned to face the other picture. “What do you reckon to that one?” I asked.

“It’s great. Our Daniel would love it.” Daniel was his son, a couple of years younger than daughter Sophie.

“Why Mansell? He’s not a gay icon, is he?”

“No, of course not. He’s a happily married man.”

“He has the moustache.”

“So has Saddam Hussein.”

“He is gay.”

“Yeah, as gay as a tree full of parrots. Listen,” Dave said. “Mansell was the greatest driver of his day, and lots of other days, because he was such a fierce competitor. He liked to win. At everything. That’s why people like Silkstone look up to him. He’s a winners’ icon, not a gay one.”