Simon Kernick - The Murder Exchange

‘Detective Sergeant Gallan, please come in.’

I followed him inside and through to a lavishly furnished but very messy lounge. It looked like the cleaner hadn’t been in for a few days. Lee Potter motioned me to a leather armchair and I sat down, wrinkling my nose at the three-quarters-full pub-sized ashtray on the table beside him, the smell reminding me why I’d chosen to give up all those years ago.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked.

I said I would, and waited while he went to get it. He seemed a genial enough chap, but then I guess you would be pretty genial if you lived an easy, relatively wealthy life from rental income, and had no responsibilities. Was I jealous? What do you think? Of course I was.

When Lee Potter came back with the coffees, he asked how he could be of assistance. ‘I hope I’m not in trouble for anything,’ he added in a tone that was a little bit too ingratiating, and sat down opposite me.

‘No, but it’s something you might be able to help with. You’ve been renting a house out to a Mr Tony Franks?’

He nodded his head. ‘That’s right. He moved out a couple of weeks ago.’

‘How long’s he been renting from you?’

‘About four years now, something like that.’

‘Can I ask how much you charged him in rent?’

Lee Potter looked taken aback. ‘Is it strictly necessary to know that? What’s it got to do with anything?’

‘I’m trying to build up a picture,’ I said, ‘and this information’s an important part of it.’

‘Two thousand two hundred a month. I probably could have got more but he was an easy tenant, and they’re not all like that, I can tell you.’

‘How many properties do you rent out, Mr Lee Potter?’

‘Four altogether.’

‘I expect they make you a tidy little income, don’t they?’

Lee Potter smiled nervously. ‘It’s not bad. Not bad at all.’

‘No, I bet it isn’t.’ My tone was deliberately suspicious. Lee Potter struck me as a weak character, someone you could push. ‘What does Mr Franks do for a living?’

‘I believe he owns his own company. I’m not sure what it does, though. As long as he paid the rent on time-’

‘… Then you didn’t ask too many questions. How many times have you met Mr Franks?’

‘Er, I don’t know. Not many. Two or three times at most.’

‘In four years?’ I raised my eyebrows.

‘There was never any need to see him more than that.’

‘He lived there alone, did he?’

Lee Potter nodded, clearly flustered by my rapid-fire questions. ‘As far as I know, yes. That’s right.’

‘Where did the money come from?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did he pay you directly or did it come from someone else?’

‘His company paid. They used to send a cheque here every month, and they were always on time. That’s why I never bothered too much. Is there something wrong?’

I ignored the question. ‘Did he leave a forwarding address when he moved out?’

‘No, no he didn’t. In fact he never actually came round at all. I got a phone call from his brother saying that he’d gone, and asking what was owed. I was concerned because obviously it was all a bit sudden, so he suggested I go round and check that everything was OK. I did, the house all looked very clean, and then he phoned back a couple of days later, we divvied everything up, and the company sent another cheque for the balance.’

‘Did his brother leave a phone number you could reach him on?’

He shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t. He-’

‘So you couldn’t actually say for certain that it was his brother?’

‘Well, no, but there was no reason to believe otherwise. Why should there have been?’

‘The reason I’m asking is that we want to talk to Mr Franks about some very serious matters, and I’m particularly interested in details of any of his associates.’

‘As I said, Mr Gallan, I only ever met him a couple of times, and that was alone. He was a model tenant in pretty much every way. He never called me out, never complained, nothing. Just paid his rent and that was it.’

I paused for a moment and took several sips from my coffee before speaking again. ‘Was there ever any suspicion on your part that the house was being used for anything other than simply being lived in?’

Lee Potter tried to look like he was thinking hard about the question. It didn’t really work. ‘No, not really,’ he said eventually.

‘Are you absolutely sure? It’s very important we know about it if there was.’

He sighed. ‘I once went round there, I don’t know, about a year or so ago, mainly because I hadn’t even seen the place for God knows how long, and I was in the area anyway.’

‘Go on.’

‘It was nothing really, but all the curtains were closed, which I thought was a bit odd as it was the middle of the day, and there were also a couple of cars there. Anyway, I rang on the doorbell a couple of times, but no one answered.’ He paused before continuing. ‘Only, I was sure there were people there, because there was a tiny gap in the sitting-room curtains and I was certain I saw the shadow of someone moving around in there. It was probably nothing, almost certainly nothing, but I phoned Mr Franks up a couple of days later and he made out that he’d been away, which was odd.’ He shrugged expansively. ‘But that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else. What do you think was happening there, then?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, but I had my ideas.

I finished the coffee, got the name of the company that paid Franks’s bills from Lee Potter, and then left.

Outside, the sky was darkening and it was already raining, but I hardly noticed as I started off in the direction of the Tube station. I was too busy thinking.

* * *

Twelve hours later my thoughts had turned to very different matters. Like why wasn’t the chief super traipsing round the rain-drenched midnight streets of Islington if he was so bloody keen to ‘foster a continued and ever deeper spirit of co-operation’ between those pounding the beat and those who’d hoped it was all behind them? It was ten past twelve and we’d just been called to the ground-floor council maisonette currently occupied by Brian and Katrina Driscoll.

The smell hit me in the face as soon as I followed Berrin and the two uniforms in through the open front door. Shit and BO and stale rubbish. Food that had gone off, trapped stagnant air; the standard, all-pervading odour of decay. A kid of about eight dressed in filthy pyjama bottoms, his ribs sticking out like they were going to burst through the skin, stood watching us impassively at the bottom of the stairs. It was dark in the hallway but there were lights on further in.

A hysterical wailing came from one of the rooms down the hall. The voice was female. She sounded drunk. ‘I can’t believe you fucking did that to me, you fucking cunt!’

‘Fuck off you old slag or you’ll fucking get some more!’

She screamed again. ‘Fuck off!’

Then him. ‘Do you want some, then? Do you fucking want some?’

There was a sound of glass or crockery breaking and the first uniform, PC Ramsay, called out that it was the police responding to a call. We walked down the hall in a long line to the kitchen, past the boy who continued to stare at us blankly.

‘I fucking called you! Look what he did to me!’ She came into view, a big, misshapen woman in jeans and a white vest that rode up over her ample belly. A thick trail of blood ran down her face and onto her neck. Its source was a large cut on her forehead where she’d clearly been struck by something. She grabbed hold of Ramsay and pulled him to her like a sexually aggressive bear. ‘Look what the cunt did to me! Look!’