“Don’t lurk in the doorway! Come in, if you’re going to!” At the sound of that booming directive, Ryan and Phillips exchanged a meaningful look and stepped inside Cragside’s master bedroom to greet its elusive owner, Lionel Horatio Gilbert.
They approached an intricately carved four-poster bed and were met with a robust-looking man in his early eighties, almost completely bald except for a few strands of wispy hair smoothed across the top of his head in one long comb-over. Gilbert was heavily overweight, his rounded face sagging at the jowls with at least two extra chins that they could see. His small, myopic eyes were red-rimmed and the purple damask bed linen was strewn with crumpled tissues. There was a crystal tumbler of lemon water beside the bed, alongside a packet of cold and flu tablets and some throat lozenges.
“Well?” he demanded, peering between them with obvious disapproval.
“We’re sorry to disturb you at this hour,” Ryan began, and meant it. There were places he would rather be at one o’clock in the morning than questioning a cantankerous old man in his sickbed.
“Cassandra tells me Victor has finally popped his clogs,” Gilbert went on, without any note of sympathy. “Don’t know why you’re all making such a damned fuss. Comes to all of us in the end, you know.”
He reached across for a fresh tissue and blew his nose loudly.
“Blasted woman has been in here blubbering about it,” he went on, mercilessly. “She should be more worried about me, given the state I’m in.”
“We can ask Mrs Gilbert to join us, if you’d like?”
Gilbert sighed gustily.
“No, no. Leave her to play Nurse Nightingale,” he said.
“We understand Victor Swann had been employed as your valet for the last fifteen years. Is that correct?”
Gilbert shook his head and the excess skin around his chin wobbled.
“Longer than that. I picked him up back in the eighties, when I was living down in Kent. I bought this place a few years ago as a wedding present to Cassandra and he moved up here with us. So long as he wasn’t drooling into his soup, I didn’t mind him staying on past retirement. Good laugh, old Victor was,” he added, with the air of one recalling a distant memory, although the man had been dead less than two hours.
“And when did you purchase Cragside?”
“Oh, back in ’98,” Gilbert said gruffly. “Cassandra had a fancy for the place.”
Ryan nodded, thinking briefly of his own nuptials and the plans he’d made for Anna’s wedding present. Sadly, they weren’t quite on the same scale.
“Were you fond of Victor?”
Gilbert blew his nose again and chucked the spent tissue onto the bedspread. Phillips eyed it with distaste, wondering whether his millions couldn’t stretch to a waste paper basket.
“Vic was a good, loyal employee, if that’s what you mean. Did his duties and wasn’t bad company. Had a bit of an eye for the ladies but who doesn’t, eh?”
He let out a bellowing laugh which promptly turned into a coughing fit. Phillips took pity and handed him a glass of water, which was snatched up. Gilbert handed the glass back to him without a word of thanks and Ryan asked the next question.
“Turning to this evening, when was the last time you saw Victor?”
“It was at about seven-fifteen. He came in to ask if there was anything I needed before he went down to have a bloody good drink at my expense,” Gilbert grumbled.
“Did he seem concerned or out of sorts?”
“Not that I noticed. He looked pleased with himself, all suited up and wearing some ridiculous hat or other.”
Ryan couldn’t argue with that.
“Can you tell me your own movements this evening?”
Gilbert gave him a pointed look.
“What for? Don’t tell me you think somebody pushed the old sod? Well, I suppose it’s not outside the realms of possibility. Always the quiet ones to watch, isn’t it?”
He let out another nasally guffaw.
“As for my movements, I’ve been cooped up in here all night. Haven’t so much as left this bed except to use the bathroom, which is right there,” he pointed a chubby finger at a connecting doorway on the other side of the room. “Hardly seen a soul except for Cassandra, who came in a few times.”
“The last time being around quarter-to-midnight?” Ryan offered.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Gilbert replied, reaching for another tissue. “I keep dozing off.”
Ryan looked at the man’s streaming nose and acknowledged that he probably wasn’t feigning illness.
“Once again, thank you for your time. We apologise for having disturbed you.”
Gilbert grunted, his eyelids already drooping.
As they closed the door behind them, Ryan turned to Phillips.
“Charming man.”
“Oh, aye, a real fat heid,” Phillips agreed, leaving Ryan to marvel at his singular turn of phrase.
*
It was almost three o’clock in the morning before Phillips let himself into the smart, three-bedroom semi he owned in an area of Newcastle known as Kingston Park. It rested on the western border of the city and had been chosen twenty years ago for its relative proximity to CID Headquarters. A lot had changed in the intervening years, he thought, as he toed off his comfortable brown loafers and slid them onto the shoe rack in the hallway next to MacKenzie’s boots. For a start, he’d lost his first wife to cancer nearly eight years ago and never thought he’d find another woman he loved enough to ask to share his life a second time.
Well, he’d surprised himself there.
Then, there was the fact he took orders from Ryan, a man young enough to be his son. It made him smile to think of how uncomfortable they’d been in the early days, compared with their easy camaraderie now. He was going to be best man at Ryan’s wedding and that made them more than just friends or work colleagues.
It made them family.
CID Headquarters had moved to new premises in another part of town and Phillips felt a pang of regret for the loss of the ugly, sixties-style building they’d called home for too many years to count. Its boxy design was no oil painting and he wouldn’t miss the perpetual stench of sweat and detergent, but those greasy walls held memories. He supposed he should be grateful he’d been spared the process of uprooting his desk and dealing with the logistical nightmare of transferring operations, thanks to a three-month suspension from work.
Phillips scrubbed a tired hand over his face.
If he were a younger man, he might have been angry. As it was, he felt relieved that the outcome of the disciplinary hearing had been relatively lenient. He’d attacked a doorman in his quest to find Denise, who was being held by a known serial killer at the time. By following his instincts, he’d brought the force into disrepute through conduct unbecoming a detective sergeant. He’d undermined public confidence, according to the stony-faced panel who had considered his case. However, since CCTV proved he hadn’t thrown the first punch and none of the other players was alive to make any further complaint, not to mention that his instincts had turned out to be correct, the Powers That Be had decided to hand down a three-month suspension without pay rather than resorting to dismissal.