Tomfoolery Read online

  The flight was packed, mainly with the sort of well-heeled passengers who could afford not only to go to the South of France, but could do so mid-week, to avoid the package holiday crowds.

  The blonde caught WDC Lester’s eye immediately, mainly because she was wearing a shoulder-length wig, albeit an expensive one. Tall — she must have been five feet nine even without her three-inch heels — and with an enviable figure, she was dressed in a cool ice-blue dress and wore dark glasses of the same discreet good quality as the soft leather overnight bag she carried. She placed her passport firmly in front of the immigration officer and glanced away with a bored expression.

  ‘Would you mind removing your sunglasses, madam?’ said the IO.

  The woman did so, slowly and with a slightly disdainful look of appraisal as though the IO had recently crept out from under something unsavoury.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the IO, adding with a smile, ‘but the photograph is not a very good likeness.’

  ‘Are they ever?’ said the woman.

  The IO was in the act of returning the passport when Marilyn Lester leaned across and took it from him. The photograph was of a woman with short brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. The detective compared it with the face of the woman in front of her and could see that, in addition to the wig, she was now wearing contact lenses. ‘Mrs Susan Harley, I am a police officer,’ said Marilyn. ‘Would you come over here, please.’

  Still keeping hold of the passport, WDC Lester stepped away from the immigration desk. The two or three passengers who had been waiting immediately behind Susan Harley stared with that conceited expression of innocent curiosity that international travellers reserve for other people they think have just been caught by the customs or some other branch of authority.

  ‘What is this about?’ asked Susan Harley haughtily.

  ‘There is a warrant in existence for your arrest,’ said WDC Lester, ‘in connection with a jewellery theft.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘The warrant has been taken out in the name of Detective Chief Superintendent Fox of the Flying Squad,’ said WDC Lester. ‘More than that I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Good God, is this what you get for reporting your husband missing?’ said Susan Harley bitterly. ‘I answered all that man’s questions. Anyway, I’m hardly running away, am I? I’m actually coming into the country … and travelling on my own passport.’

  ‘Is there any reason why you should not travel on your own passport, Mrs Harley?’ asked WDC Lester drily, and taking the woman’s arm by way of token apprehension, led her to the Special Branch office.

  *

  Fox put his head round the door of the Flying Squad office. ‘Any messages?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said a DC. ‘Two. One’s from Special Branch at Heathrow. They’ve nicked Susan Harley.’

  ‘Have they now?’ said Fox. ‘Well, well. And the other?’

  ‘From DI Evans, sir. Came in just after you left for Bow Street this morning. The package they found in Harley’s house at Stoke d’Abernon contained a firearm.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fox. ‘What sort of firearm?’

  The DC glanced down at the message form. ‘A three-eight Smith and Wesson, guv. They’re doing it for dabs and ballistics now.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Fox, beaming round at the occupants of the office. ‘Every day in every way, things are getting better,’ he said to no one in particular.

  The DC waited until Fox had left the office, slamming the door behind him, and turned to his colleague. ‘What the hell did that mean?’ he asked.

  *

  Fox looked at Susan Harley — at the blonde wig and the ice-blue dress that did little to disguise her shapely figure — and wondered if the dowdy and unbecoming clothes she had worn previously had been a deliberate deception. ‘Well, Mrs Harley, quite a change in appearance, eh?’

  ‘I told that woman who arrested me that I’ve answered all your questions. This is an outrage. All I did was to report Tom missing. I demand to see my solicitor.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Fox, drawing a chair up to the table and laying out his cigarette case and lighter. He knew that only one person could actually have fired the gun that killed Donald Dixon, and the most important thing right now was for that person to be charged with his murder. Fox had not ruled out Jane Meadows entirely, but he was fairly certain that she had been telling the truth when she claimed to know nothing of Dixon’s death, even though she had helped to bury him. Added to which, it was fairly evident that she had been cruelly used by Harley, who had tossed her aside when she had served her purpose.

  That left the Harleys, husband and wife, and he couldn’t wait to see them start accusing each other.

  ‘Incidentally,’ began Fox, pointing, ‘that is a tape recorder and everything you say will be recorded and may be used in evidence.’ He nodded to Rosie Webster, who switched on the machine. ‘Now then,’ continued Fox, ‘I have reason to believe that you and your husband were both involved in the theft of a quantity of jewellery from a London hotel on the twelfth of July last —’

  ‘Is this some kind of a joke?’ asked Susan Harley.

  Fox raised his eyebrows and assumed a pained expression. ‘Talking of jokes,’ he said, ‘why did you inform the police that your husband was missing from home when it now appears that you knew precisely where he was?’

  Susan Harley half raised her hands and then allowed them to fall to her lap. ‘I didn’t know where he was,’ she said in resigned tones. ‘In fact, I still don’t.’ For a moment or two she looked thoughtfully around the predominantly green interview room. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised, though,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? Why is that?’

  ‘Women,’ she said simply. ‘He spent all his money on other women.’ She paused to allow herself a sly smile. ‘I suppose he thought that by disappearing he could just start up again somewhere else with whoever’s taken his fancy this time.’

  ‘I see,’ said Fox, giving the impression that he believed every word. ‘Let’s discuss this jewel theft, then.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ said Susan Harley and suddenly started to cry. It was a very convincing performance, but one to which Fox was quite accustomed. And it was one of the reasons why Rosie Webster was sitting only feet away from the woman, watching her impassively. Fox was unimpressed and waited for the act to finish.

  Susan Harley dabbed at her eyes, being careful not to smudge her mascara, and looked up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I just can’t understand why you’re talking to me about a jewel robbery.’

  Fox was quite ready to destroy what he saw as Susan Harley’s implausible play-acting, but he knew that the more he could get her to say, the more likely it was that she would finish up contradicting herself … and everyone else for that matter. ‘Mrs Harley,’ he said, ‘your husband is strongly suspected of stealing jewellery from a West End hotel, jewellery to the value of one hundred thousand pounds.’

  Susan Harley took a deep breath. She had gone pale and for a moment Fox thought that she was going to faint as Jane Meadows had done. But this woman was made of sterner stuff. ‘This is all too fantastic for words,’ she said slowly. ‘My husband is an insurance broker. He arranges cover against things being stolen. He doesn’t steal them himself.’ She gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘It … well, I mean —’

  Fox threw the post-mortem photograph of Donald Dixon on the table. ‘Know this man, do you?’ he asked.

  Susan Harley leaned forward. ‘Yes,’ she said, and sat back sharply.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘But what is it? What’s this man …?’ She lapsed into silence, apparently unable to take in the events of the day.

  ‘That man is Donald Dixon,’ said Fox, ‘and I’m particularly interested to know how he finished up in a grave in the middle of Devon, in a coffin with your husband’s name on it.’

  ‘Devon? A coffin? Tom’s name?
’ Susan Harley was clearly becoming genuinely distraught.

  Fox, however, was not yet convinced that this woman opposite him was not a brilliant actress. ‘How did you come to know that man?’ Fox pointed at the photograph.

  Susan Harley sighed. It was a sigh of resignation. ‘He came to the house one day.’

  ‘With another man?’ Fox took a guess.

  ‘Yes.’ She spoke softly.

  ‘Would you speak more loudly, Mrs Harley, please.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again.

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘They pushed their way in and started making threats. They said that if Tom didn’t pay up they’d kill him. I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what it was all about.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘My first priority was to get them out of the house. To be quite honest, I thought they were going to rape me.’

  ‘Where was your husband at this time?’

  ‘Away on business, or so I thought. On reflection, he was probably with some woman somewhere.’

  ‘And what did he have to say about the visit of these two men?’

  ‘Oh, he just laughed it off. Said something about these people not understanding the way the system worked, and that they would get paid. He told me not to worry.’

  Fox took a cigarette from the case on the table, tapped it thoughtfully and then lit it. ‘As a matter of interest, Mrs Harley,’ he said, ‘why didn’t you tell me of this visit when I saw you the first time … at Kingston?’

  Susan Harley appeared to give the question serious thought before answering. ‘I suppose I half believed what my husband told me … about it being all right. I wanted to believe it, but I was apprehensive. I honestly didn’t think that it had anything to do with his disappearance. And anyway, I was scared that they might come back … which they did. It’s all very well to tell the police these things, but if they’d come back and threatened me …’ Her shoulders dropped resignedly. ‘And they did.’

  ‘I see. Another thing, Mrs Harley …’

  Susan Harley looked up. ‘Yes?’ She sounded drained of emotion.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that the house at Kingston was rented?’

  ‘Why should I have done?’ The question was hostile. ‘I don’t see what possible relevance that could have had to his being missing.’

  Fox shrugged. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but then you weren’t investigating his disappearance.’ Susan stared blankly at the detective. ‘Your husband, Mrs Harley,’ Fox went on, ‘has been engaged in a life of crime — serious crime — for at least the past two years. He was dismissed from his job as an insurance broker because he had got into heavy debt. And it was debt of the worst possible kind. Bookmakers. Did these men say anything about gambling debts?’

  Susan Harley shook her head miserably. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But it’s true about horses. Tom always liked racing, but I never thought that he was in trouble over it.’

  ‘I think the short answer to that,’ said Fox, ‘is that he was forced to commit crime to appease the people to whom he owed these large sums of money. Fifteen thousand pounds is a figure that’s been quoted.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘And you maintain that you knew nothing about your husband’s criminal activities?’

  ‘No, not a thing.’ She sat in silence for some time and then looked up at Fox. ‘D’you know where my husband is?’ she asked.

  ‘Your husband is in Cell Number Two at this police station,’ said Fox.

  ‘What?’ Susan Harley was clearly astounded by Fox’s revelation. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘In a house in Stoke d’Abernon, as a matter of fact.’ Fox had decided that it was time to drive a wedge between husband and wife. ‘He had been living there — on and off, as you might say — for the last year. We also arrested a very attractive blonde who was living with him.’ That was not quite true, but it would do. ‘They were going to get married, so she said. Prior to that, he lived in a house in Godalming, presumably with the same woman. I take it you knew nothing about that?’

  ‘No.’ Susan Harley gave an involuntary shudder and stared at Fox for some time. Then she pointed at his cigarette case. ‘D’you think I could have one of those?’ she asked.

  Fox gave her a cigarette and then thumbed his lighter, holding it towards her.

  She placed her hand on his and drew it towards the tip of her cigarette. ‘I knew he was a womaniser,’ she said resignedly, ‘but I didn’t know anything about this house in —’ She broke off, a quizzical expression on her face.

  ‘Stoke d’Abernon.’

  ‘To think he’s been cheating on me all that time.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Well, I don’t give a damn about the consequences. Not any more.’

  ‘Why did you report your husband missing, Mrs Harley?’

  ‘I honestly thought he’d been murdered by those two thugs, and I didn’t see why they should get away with it.’

  Fox leaned forward. ‘You haven’t told me everything, have you?’

  For some time, Susan Harley sat unseeing, a glazed expression on her face. Then she sighed deeply. ‘I knew there was something wrong,’ she said at last. ‘Men coming to the house, often late at night. Once they brought a van and put something in it out of the garage.’

  ‘Could it have been a coffin?’

  She looked at him, unbelieving, as though it was all a dream. ‘I don’t know,’ she said and shrugged. ‘I was in bed. To be honest, I didn’t want to know.’

  Fox rolled the ash carefully from his cigarette. ‘Despite what you said previously, Mrs Harley, I would suggest that your husband was away from home more often than he was there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that he returned after the time you said you saw him last?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fox smiled at the thought that Dixon’s body, in its coffin, was probably in the garage when DCI Barker from Kingston interviewed her. He would enjoy telling him that. ‘Are you going to tell me why you suddenly disappeared after I saw you last, Mrs Harley?’

  Susan Harley exhaled a long puff of smoke. ‘I suppose that no matter what happens, a wife will always try to defend her husband,’ she said.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of the men who came to the house before came again. There was another man with him. Not that man …’ She pointed at Dixon’s picture. ‘I’d not seen the other man before.’

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘They said that they knew that I’d talked to the police about Tom and that if I knew what was good for me I wouldn’t do so again. And just to make sure, they told me to go to France and stay there. Out of the way. They said that if I didn’t, they would kill me.’

  Fox held his hand out towards Rosie Webster. ‘Give me that picture of the chap we’ve got banged up in Brixton,’ he said being careful to avoid naming Murchison. ‘Seen this man before?’ he asked, handing the print to Susan Harley.

  ‘Yes, that’s him. That’s …’ She paused for a moment. ‘That’s Murchison,’ she said.

  ‘He told you his name, did he?’

  ‘Yes. He said he was a business partner of Tom’s.’

  ‘So you went to France?’

  ‘Yes. I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t know where Tom was and I had no idea what was happening. The whole thing had become a nightmare.’

  ‘Why then did you come back, Mrs Harley? What caused you to think that you would now be safe?’

  ‘I saw it in the papers. That Murchison had been arrested, and that Dixon had been murdered. There was a photograph. That one.’ She pointed at the photograph of Dixon that still lay on the table, the one that police had released in their first attempts to identify him.

  ‘That wig you’re wearing, Mrs Harley …’

  ‘What about it?’ She stroked at it self-consciously.

  ‘How long have you owned it?’

  ‘Oh, goodness, I don’t know.’ She thought for a moment. ‘M
ust be about two years, I suppose.’

  ‘And have you ever owned another?’

  ‘No. Why d’you ask?’

  Fox ignored the question. ‘Would you be prepared to give a sample of your own hair. For scientific comparison.’

  She looked puzzled, and then shrugged. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but why?’

  ‘Just to satisfy me that it does not match hair found in a wig used at the jewellery theft I was talking about earlier.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ve nothing to worry about there. I told you, I know nothing about it.’ She suddenly looked at Fox with a penetrating stare, and for the first time the hard lines around her mouth were quite marked. ‘Who was this woman he was living with?’ she asked.

  ‘A very good-looking girl called Jane Meadows. Your husband told her that he was going to marry her and that they were going to live in the South of France. On the proceeds of the jewellery theft.’

  Far from expressing signs of jealousy, Susan Harley just laughed. ‘Silly little bitch,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know what she was letting herself in for.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fox had decided to listen to the tape recording of his interview with Susan Harley before putting any questions to Thomas Harley. In fact he listened to it twice.

  Then he sent for Denzil Evans. He wanted a first-hand account from him about what had been found in the house at Stoke d’Abernon.

  ‘We took every bit of paper we could find, sir,’ said DI Evans, ‘although I suspect that most of it’ll be bloody useless. But the most important thing of all was the gun.’

  ‘Good bit of work that, Denzil. In the cold water tank in the loft, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Any particular reason for looking there?’

  ‘Got to look everywhere, sir.’ Evans sounded self-righteous. ‘Start at the top and work your way down to the bottom. Found some interesting things in cold water tanks and lavatory cisterns in my time.’

  ‘All right, Denzil, I know you’re good. You keep telling me.’

  ‘It was a three-eight Smith and Wesson, sir. The same calibre as the rounds they took out of Dixon. The shell cases were in there too.’