They turned on to Old Gloucester Road, and Kelly brought up Google Maps on her phone to see which end of the road they would find number 27. ‘There’s not much residential housing down here – it must be converted flats.’
‘Or it’s a wild goose chase,’ Nick said grimly, pulling up on double-yellow lines outside a Chinese restaurant. Number 27 was sandwiched between a laundrette and a boarded-up bookies. ‘I think our chances of finding Mr James Stanford here are slim.’
Nick took the car’s logbook from the glovebox and left it prominently on the dashboard, the police crest on the cover usually sufficient to deter traffic wardens.
The door to number 27 was grimy with exhaust fumes. It opened into an empty lobby, its tiled floor cracked and dirty. There was no reception desk, and no internal door or lift, only rows of locked mailboxes covering three of the walls.
‘Are you sure we’ve got the right place?’ Kelly asked.
‘It’s the right place, all right,’ Nick said grimly. ‘We’re just not going to find James Stanford here.’ He pointed to a poster on the door, its edges peeling away from the grubby paintwork.
Sick of picking up your mail? Upgrade your account and we’ll forward it to your door!
‘It’s a mail centre. A posh PO box number – nothing more.’ He pulled out his phone and took a photograph of the poster, then scanned the rows of mailboxes, which seemed to be in no discernible order.
‘Here it is.’ Kelly had started at the opposite side of the lobby. ‘James Stanford.’ She tugged the handle hopefully. ‘Locked.’
‘The credit card used to pay for the adverts is registered to this address, too,’ Nick said. ‘Get a data protection waiver to them as soon as we get back, and find out who put the mail forwarding in place. We’re being given the runaround, and I don’t like it.’
The company behind the Old Gloucester Road postal address was surprisingly helpful. Keen to avoid any accusation of wrongdoing and – Kelly suspected – aware they had been less than robust with their own checks, they handed over everything they had on James Stanford without waiting for a data protection waiver.
Stanford had provided copies of a credit card bill and a utility statement, as well as his driving licence, showing him to be a white male born in 1959. All three documents gave an address in Amersham, a town in Buckinghamshire at the end of the Metropolitan line.
‘Bet house prices are steep round here,’ Nick commented, as they drove past a series of huge detached houses, each set behind imposing metal gates.
‘Do you want me to let local CID know?’ Kelly said, picking up her phone to find the number.
Nick shook his head. ‘We’ll be in and out before they know it. Let’s check out the house and make a few discreet enquiries with the neighbours if no one’s home.’
Tudor House, Candlin Street, was not Tudor at all, despite the black-painted beams criss-crossing the exterior. A large, modern build, the house was set in what Kelly estimated to be an acre or so of garden. Nick pulled up in front of the gates and looked for a buzzer, but they swung open automatically.
‘What’s the point of those, then?’ Kelly said.
‘Just for show, aren’t they?’ Nick said. ‘More money than sense.’
The gravel drive crunched beneath the wheels of their car, and Nick looked at the house for signs someone was at home. They parked parallel to a gleaming grey Range Rover, and Nick whistled. ‘Very nice.’
The doorbell had an old-fashioned pull mechanism, at odds with the age of the house, but presumably meant to add to the ye olde feel Kelly supposed had been intended by the mock-Tudor facade. Keeping up with the Joneses, she thought. Long before the jangling of the bell had begun to die away, they heard footsteps behind the large front door. Nick and Kelly both stepped away, putting distance between themselves and whoever they were about to meet. It never did to make assumptions about the way people might behave, even in a house like this.
The door swung open and an attractive woman in her early fifties smiled at them expectantly. She wore a black velvet tracksuit with a pair of slippers. Kelly held out her warrant card and the smile disappeared from the woman’s face.
‘Is someone hurt?’ The woman’s hands flew to her throat, an instinctive reaction Kelly had seen a hundred times. There were some people for whom the mere sight of a uniform prompted fear of discovery, or arrest. This woman wasn’t one of them. For her the police meant an accident, or worse.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Kelly said. ‘We’re just making some enquiries. We’re looking for a Mr James Stanford.’
‘That’s my husband. He’s at work. Is there a problem?’
‘Could we come in?’ Kelly said. The woman hesitated, then stood aside to allow them inside a bright, spacious hall. A neat stack of post lay on a narrow hall table, and Kelly glanced at the top envelope as Mrs Stanford led them into the kitchen.
Mr J. T. Stanford.