Local Gone Missing(71)
One of the senior officers in the Addison Gardens case was still on the force, just. “I retire in three months—can’t wait. The job isn’t the same,” he complained when Elise tracked him down.
“I just want a chat—I’ll buy you a late breakfast if you like,” she said. “I’m in the neighborhood.”
DI Wicks had already ordered a full English before they got there—Caro said she’d have one too, and Elise whispered to the woman at the counter that she’d have wholemeal toast with avocado and a poached egg. When it arrived, Wicks looked at it as if someone had vomited on the table.
“What is that muck?” he said as he shoveled a whole fried egg into his mouth.
“It’s good for you—eating this muck means I’ll live longer than you.” She laughed. But she didn’t know that anymore. “Anyway . . . like I said on the phone, we’re investigating the death of Charlie Perry—Charles Williams, you knew him as—and I’d like to find out a bit more about the attack on his daughter and her boyfriend.”
“Horrible case,” he said, wiping his mouth with a tiny serviette. “That Bennett was an animal.”
“He’s out,” Caro said.
“Is he?”
“Yes, and missing,” Elise said. “He went AWOL from his hostel over the bank holiday weekend.”
“Well, he’ll be straight back inside where he belongs when they find him.”
“Could he have gone looking for Charles Williams? Did he know him? Was there any connection?”
“He burgled the man’s house—that’s the only connection I know of. Why?”
“A man turned up in Addison Gardens around the anniversary—days after Bennett was released.”
“Right. Well, we never found any link.” Wicks busied himself with his plate.
“But you looked?”
Wicks looked up and nodded slowly.
“Yeah. There were things that jarred with me. The alarms, for a start. There were two or three separate ones—but they didn’t go off. It would’ve taken ages for anyone to disable them without the codes. Mr. Williams said his daughter knew where to find them—she’d seen him put the list in his desk drawer once and told him off for not locking them away. She could have told Bennett when he tortured her. The thing was, we couldn’t ask her, could we? She was in a coma for weeks and then her injuries meant she couldn’t remember anything.”
“No, we’ve met her, poor girl.”
“And there were some very valuable antiques and jewelry missing but we found only Mr. Williams’s computer in Bennett’s squat. My boss thought Bennett must have dumped the stuff in people’s bins when it went pear-shaped. They were small items and he was an addict robbing to feed his habit, not a jewel thief stealing to order. We searched but never found anything. And he wouldn’t say a word when we questioned him. The psychiatric assessment for his defense team said he was severely traumatized.”
“He was? What about the victims?” Caro said.
“Quite. The father was destroyed when I told him what had happened,” DI Wicks said. “He threw up in my car.”
Elise put a serviette over the remains of her food.
“What do you think happened to the stolen goods?”
“I really don’t know. We had our hands full with the murder and attempted murder, and as I remember, the insurance company was dealing with retrieving the stuff. I think the parties came to a settlement in the end. I could check.”
“Please. Did Stuart Bennett do it alone?” she asked. “Did he have associates? Fences? People he could have stayed in touch with?”
“There was no evidence of an accomplice,” Wicks said as he wiped up the last of a yolk with a crust of bread. “But the squat where Bennett lived was full of junkies and no-hopers—there were even little kids living in that shithole. We questioned them all but got nowhere. I can have another look in the files if you like.”
* * *
—
Elise drove back. They were sitting in nose-to-tail traffic and Caro was checking her e-mails.
“There’s an update from the lab,” she said. “Results from the contents of Charlie’s suitcase. They’ve found his fingerprints and the laborer’s everywhere and—oh, hang on—a thumbprint on the phone matches a Philip Golding. He’s on the system. Date of birth: October 1982. And a record for possessing and supplying cocaine and several drunk-and-disorderly offenses.”
“Who the hell is he? He doesn’t sound like Charlie Perry’s type. Tell Wicks.”
It didn’t take him long to call back.
“I’ve found him,” he barked down the phone. “Golding was living in the squat and questioned at the time but nothing stuck. I’m sending a photo of him. I expect he’s probably shooting up in a park somewhere now.”
He wasn’t. A quick search on Caro’s tablet showed that an inquest had just been opened into Phil Golding’s death. Which was a shame on two counts, as he was also the man on Birdie’s residential home CCTV.
Fifty-four
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019
Elise
Ronnie was standing outside her door, looking up the High Street, when Elise finally got home.