Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

Franks’s house was about a hundred yards further along from the spot where Robert had last been seen and wasn’t one to which he delivered. Slowly, I started towards it, trying to remember the exact route he would have taken and which houses he delivered to, but without much success. It was too long ago. Too much time and too many cases had come to pass since then, and already the life of Robert Jones was passing into ancient history. He would always be remembered, of course, by his parents and his sister, but even they would think about him less and less as time wore on, and to everyone else he would simply become a vague memory, a smiling, permanently young face in a photograph that would occasionally inspire a sad and wistful conversation. It was more than a tragedy, it was an injustice. Someone, some day, would have to pay.

Franks’s place was the end extension of a huge villa, set back a few yards from the road, that probably housed at least half a dozen professionally spacious flats and which had two grand entrance porticoes along its length. The extension had been built much later than the villa, probably in the sixties, and looked as if it had been attached at a slightly crooked angle. The paintwork was a fading sky blue rather than the white of the rest of the building, making it stand out for the wrong reasons. Apart from that, though, it looked OK. Small, but reasonably well kept. Newish windows had been installed on both floors, and there was a tiny, recently cobbled driveway in front of it with room for two cars at a squeeze. A high stone wall separated it from the main parking area in front of the rest of the villa, as if its occupants didn’t want anything to do with their tattier neighbour.

Today, Franks’s driveway was empty as I walked up it to the front door. Through the net curtains, I could make out a clean, well-furnished interior but no obvious signs of life. I rang the doorbell but no one answered, then looked through the letterbox. There was a pile of tacky-looking brochures and various other bits of junk mail on the carpet — at least a week’s worth, probably a lot more. It looked like he might have moved out.

I went round to the nearest entrance portico and saw that there were buzzers for three flats on the wall outside. Beneath the buzzers was a sticker saying that the building was protected by CCTV cameras — not that I could see any in evidence. I rang the first two but got no answer, so I tried the third. I needed to ring several times but eventually a moderately annoyed female voice came on the line. ‘Yes?’ she said in an accusatory voice. I identified myself, and explained that I was here as part of an inquiry. Her voice immediately lost its initial hostility, and she buzzed me in. Hers was the ground-floor flat, and she came out of the door to greet me, clad only in a dressing gown and slippers. She was about thirty with short blonde hair, and nice-looking in a Sloaney sort of way. In a dressing gown as well. Perhaps I was going to have to watch out.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize you were the police. I thought you were here to sell me something.’

‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,’ I told her.

She smiled. ‘I don’t know either. Anyway, please, come in. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve got a terrible cold. That’s why I’m not working.’ She sniffed loudly to prove it, then stepped aside to let me in. ‘I hope it’s nothing about David,’ she added, leading me into a spacious, well-furnished lounge.

‘David?’

‘My husband.’

I took a seat and she sat down on the sofa opposite, her legs tightly pressed together. Somehow, I got the feeling I was safe from any predatory advances. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s about your neighbour to the left, a Tony Franks?’

‘Oh yes, Tony. Nice-looking guy. Dark hair.’ Her tones were clipped and upper-class. This girl had definitely not been educated at the local comprehensive. Mind you, who had round here?

I nodded. ‘That sounds like him. This is a photo.’ I removed the mugshot from my jacket pocket and briefly showed it to her.

‘Oh yes, that’s him.’ She excused herself while she sneezed into a tissue she’d removed from the pocket of the dressing gown. ‘Why? Has he done something wrong?’

‘I don’t know is the short answer. Possibly.’

‘I thought it was funny.’

‘What?’

‘Well, the way he moved out. It was all quite sudden.’

‘When was that?’

‘I don’t know for certain. I didn’t actually see him go. All I know is about a week ago a man turned up in a van and took some stuff away.’

‘This man, had you ever seen him there before?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I hadn’t. On the day he came I was outside putting the rubbish out for the dustmen when I saw him loading it up. I don’t normally take too much notice of what the neighbours are up to — I mean, you don’t in London, do you?’ I nodded, thinking that that was probably the root cause of so much that was wrong with it, and waited while she continued. ‘But there are quite a few burglaries around here, as you probably know, so I asked him what he was up to, and he told me he was Tony’s brother.’

‘Those were his exact words: “I’m Tony’s brother”?’

She nodded. ‘That’s right, so I thought he must have something to do with him. He was friendly enough, too, not at all furtive, as you’d expect a burglar to be.’ She paused to blow her nose, once again apologizing. ‘He said that Tony was moving out, and he was helping with the removals. There wasn’t a lot I could say to that. I asked him if Tony would be coming along later and he said he would. But he never did.’

‘You never saw Mr Franks again?’

‘No. I haven’t seen him for two or three weeks at least.’

I made some calculations. It was sixteen days since Shaun Matthews’s murder. The timing sounded very convenient. Now for the big question. ‘Did you take down the registration of the vehicle this gentleman was driving?’ I mentally crossed my fingers.

‘Yes, I did. I don’t like to be a busybody and I know it’s none of my business, but I memorized it while I was speaking to him, just in case, and I wrote it down on a piece of paper as soon as I got back in.’ She stood up, sniffing loudly. ‘Now, what have I done with it? Excuse me for a minute, will you?’

She wandered out of the room and I hoped I was going to get a break. Even if it proved difficult to locate Franks, whoever was moving his stuff had to have some information as to his whereabouts. Somehow I knew I was on the right track. Call it instinct, if you like. It was just a matter of continuing to pursue the scent while at the same time persuading my superiors that it was a worthwhile investment of my time. This would be the hardest part, particularly now that it looked like the area’s criminals were beginning to wake up from the previous week’s inactivity. An aggravated burglary the previous night in which a pregnant woman had been threatened with a knife by two intruders, who’d threatened to cut her open if she didn’t reveal the whereabouts of her valuables, had already caused the chief super yet another serious resources headache. What with the continued clamour over the assault on the young girl, things were getting extremely stretched. Already Knox had hinted that the murder squad was likely to be reduced still further in the next twenty-four hours, so time was of the essence.

‘Here it is,’ she said, coming back in the room with a piece of paper. ‘I wasn’t sure whether I’d thrown it away or not, but it was in the drawer.’ She handed it to me, and I put it in my top pocket, thanking her.

‘Can you describe the man for me, Miss …?’

‘Deerborne. Mrs Judy Deerborne. I’m not too good at this, but I’ll give it a go. He was quite well built. Sort of tough-looking, which was why I wasn’t entirely sure about him. About fortyish, maybe a couple of years older, five nine or ten, and I think he was bald, although it wasn’t easy to tell, because he was wearing a cap. He also had quite a big head.’