Light Fantastic

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

When the milkman alerts police to two bodies at the fashionable Hampstead home of Andrew and Kim Light, it seems obvious who the deceased are . . . until Mr Light walks through the door. Just who is the other man? Is Andrew Light as innocent as he'd like to appear, or does his smooth lawyer's manner hide a cruel and callous character? As the investigation develops, it becomes clear that there are far more sinister forces at work, and a frightening character has infiltrated the fashionable world of Hampstead.

Release date: November 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 224

Sample

The house was probably Georgian, but I’m not much good at identifying architectural periods. What I did know was that it was in that part of
Notting Hill where an asking price of a million pounds wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.

A blonde policewoman, preening herself and trying desperately hard to appear photogenic, stood at the foot of the short flight of steps leading to what remained of the front door. The television
cameras hadn’t arrived yet, but I suppose she was living in hope. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked brightly, moving herself sufficiently to stand in front of me, at the same time
casting a suspicious glance at my black detective sergeant, Dave Poole, known in the trade as my ‘bag-carrier’.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Brock, SCG West,’ I said, waving my warrant card as I informed her in policeman’s shorthand that I was from Serious Crime Group (West) at New
Scotland Yard, even though my office was at Curtis Green in Whitehall. ‘And DS Poole.’ I cocked a thumb at Dave just in case she thought his name was SCG West.

The policewoman appeared disappointed and stepped aside. After all, she was doing an important job and perhaps didn’t know, and would probably have cared even less if she had known, that
my colleagues and I were responsible for all the serious crimes from Westminster to Hillingdon.

However, don’t be misled into believing that because my area of operations covers much of the better class district of London there is an absence of crime. Believe me, the rich and famous
are often up to some sort of villainy. Even if they’re peers of the realm they’re not disqualified from pumping themselves full of cocaine.

The detective inspector from the local nick – he introduced himself as Ted Fellowes – was standing under the portico in front of the shattered front door. He seemed a bit young for a
DI and I suspected that he was a graduate of that forcing process known as the Special Course at Bramshill Police College, a wondrous scheme that frequently elevates callow young constables to
levels way above their competence. Even so, he’ll probably be a commander before I make superintendent.

‘So what have we got, Ted?’ It was the standard copper’s question: a way of finding out what the situation was. I knew that I was dealing with two suspicious deaths – the
phone call to my office had told me that – but it’s always nice to know how the Old Bill had got to hear of it. I just hoped he wouldn’t tell me in the strangulated prose known as
Bramshillese.

‘A milkman called police—’ Fellowes began.

‘Funny name for a milkman,’ muttered Dave, having also sussed out that the DI was probably a Special Course man.

Fellowes gave Dave a withering glance and started again. ‘A milkman called police at about ten past nine’ – he pointed down the steps: a man in a striped apron was smoking a
cigarette and leaning against a milk float – ‘after he found that yesterday’s milk hadn’t been taken in. He knocked but got no answer. The rapid-response car turned up but
couldn’t effect an entry. Bloody good timber they used when they built these places,’ he said, kicking a jagged piece of wood down the steps. ‘The crew called the fire brigade and
they banjoed the door.’

Good, he spoke English. ‘Do we know who the victims are?’

‘They’ve not been positively identified, sir, but we believe them to be a couple called Light: Andrew and Kim. At least, they’re the names on the electoral roll.’
Fellowes led us into the house and pushed open the sitting-room door. ‘The man’s body is in here and the woman’s is in the master bedroom on the first floor. They both appear to
have been shot. The scenes-of-crime lot are outside in their van. They’ve laid the platforms, but they can’t do anything else until the pathologist turns up.’

We picked our way across the small platforms that were designed to prevent the importation of material from outside, material that might confuse the white-suited scenes-of-crime experts.

The sitting room was sumptuously furnished and richly carpeted. I let out a silent sigh of envy: the whole of my pad in Wimbledon that I’m forced to share with my estranged wife Helga
– lack of finances prevent us from going our separate ways – would probably have fitted into this room and still left space.

A pair of sofas upholstered in velvet faced each other at right angles to the fireplace. A low coffee table between them held a silver rose bowl, an edition of Country Life magazine and
a copy of The Sunday Times. Over the fireplace hung a painting that would undoubtedly have paid off my mortgage with money to spare.

‘Nice bit of crenellation, guv,’ said Dave, gazing up at the ornate ceiling.

‘How the hell d’you come to know a word like that, Dave?’

‘Read it in a book, guv.’

‘What sort of book?’

‘A dictionary, guv.’

‘And when did you have time to study a dictionary, Dave?’

‘When I was reading English at university,’ said Dave smugly, with a smirk that said he’d got one over on the governor.

Isn’t it amazing? Dave had been working with me for over a year now, but you learn something about your colleagues every day. My fault really: I should have looked up his personal records,
but the say-so from a DI on division that Dave was a good detective was enough for me to take him on.

The dead man’s body, clothed in a short, gold-coloured dressing gown – silk by the look of it – lay face down on the floor near the windows, across which the heavy, damask
curtains were still drawn. There was a round mark at his temple and a pool of blood beneath the head: as Fellowes had suggested, it was probably a bullet wound, but in this game you learn never to
make assumptions. The pathologist would tell me. Much later, of course.

‘Been shot,’ said Dave.

I cast an acid glance at my sergeant. ‘You’re coming on a treat, Dave,’ I said. ‘But as you’ve got nothing better to do, nip out and have a word with the milkman.
Then he can go on his way. I’d hate to have complaints from the locals that they’d been deprived of their milk by the police. These days they’d probably sue for
damages.’

I examined the body more closely. A full head of brown hair, expensively cut, and a signet ring on the little finger of the right hand. And a lingering aroma of aftershave adulterated by the
unique odour of blood.

The main bedroom was immediately above the sitting room and was white: rich white carpet, white fitted wardrobes and dressing tables, and a huge bateau bed, also white.

On the bed – on a white fur coverlet – lay the body of the second victim. She too appeared to have been shot in the head. I guessed that she was in her early thirties, a good-looking
girl with long black hair. I was left in no doubt that she had a gorgeous figure: she was naked. Her breasts were so firm and shapely that I thought she must have had implants, but Dave would
undoubtedly tell me later: a bit of a boobs man is Dave.

The girl’s right hand clutched a pink, silk peignoir – most of it beneath her – her left arm flung carelessly across the pillow. Legs slightly apart, the left one hanging over
the edge of the bed, bent at the knee.

One of Fellowes’s detectives appeared in the doorway. ‘Pathologist’s here, sir,’ he said.

Downstairs, Dr Henry Mortlock stood just inside the fractured front door. ‘Morning, Harry. Business looking up, is it?’

Mortlock was a Home Office pathologist with whom I’d worked on several cases. If there had been an Oscar for black humour, he would have had a row of statuettes on his mantelpiece. We
shook hands and I explained what was known so far.

‘I’ll start down here and work my way up,’ said Mortlock, without the glimmer of a smile. Putting on his rimless glasses, he took off his jacket and handed it to a DC whom
he’d clearly mistaken for a manservant of some kind.

I stood in the doorway of the sitting room and watched Mortlock at work. He hummed a few bars from Tosca as he knelt down beside the body, opened his bag and set out his instruments.
‘Are you there, Harry?’ he asked, speaking to the body.

‘One knock for yes, two knocks for no,’ I said.

‘Rigor mortis seems to have passed off,’ said Mortlock, pointedly ignoring my flippancy.

‘I have the feeling that you’re going to tell me something significant, Henry.’

‘Rigor usually disappears thirty-six hours after death,’ continued Mortlock, selecting one of about three thermometers from his collection of goodies. ‘It could be, therefore,
that death occurred at least that long ago.’ But then he ruined it. ‘It’s a very unreliable indicator though,’ he added. ‘I’ll be more certain after the
post-mortem.’ He stood up. ‘Where’s the other one?’

‘Upstairs in the front bedroom. OK to let the SOCOs in, Henry?’

‘Yes, let them do their worst,’ said Mortlock.

I sent a runner to roust the scenes-of-crime officers from their van and Henry and I went upstairs. He examined the body of the dead woman, took a few temperatures and said the same thing again
about rigor mortis.

‘That ties in with what the milkman said, guv.’ Dave Poole appeared at my elbow.

‘And what did your very good friend the milkman say, Dave?’

‘He says he left milk here at about nine yesterday morning. This morning it was still on the step. That would square with their being murdered the night before last.’

I shook my head. Oh, if only it were that easy. ‘There are a number of flaws in your reasoning, Dave,’ I said. ‘Firstly, we don’t know they’ve been murdered. It
could have been a suicide pact. One kills the other and then shoots himself. Or herself.’ I shot an arch glance at Dave, testing him.

Dave picked at his teeth with a pin. ‘So where’s the weapon?’ He was always very good at getting to the point.

All right, it was a wind-up. I had to admit that what I was dealing with here was a double murder. ‘Secondly,’ I continued, ‘the deceased may have been the sort of idle sods
who couldn’t always be bothered to bring in their milk. Or maybe it was the maid’s job and she didn’t turn up yesterday, and the deceased aforementioned wouldn’t demean
themselves to bring it in.’

‘Maybe the butler did it,’ said Dave churlishly.

Henry Mortlock declared himself reasonably satisfied with his on-site examination – he never committed himself further than that – and departed.

The next couple of hours were taken up with the scenes-of-crime team taking photographs, searching for fingerprints and generally sweeping the place with their E-vac machines in the hope that
some speck of dust or shred of fibre might solve this double murder for me.

‘There’s been a break-in, Mr Brock,’ said a young lady in a fetching white boiler suit and latex gloves. She told me her name was Linda Mitchell, and that she was the senior
SOCO.

‘Happens all the time,’ I said, ‘but right now I’m dealing with two dead bodies.’

Linda smiled – someone had obviously told her about my sense of humour – and led me down to the kitchen at the rear of the house. ‘It looks as though entry was made that
way,’ she said, pointing to a window over the sink.

The original windows at the back of the house had been replaced with a type of sealed, UPVC double-glazed units. The window that had interested Linda had had its glass removed, apparently from
the outside, presumably by the simple expedient of stripping away the rubber mounts that held it in place. It would have been an almost silent operation.

‘It’s beginning to look like a professional hit,’ I mused. And if I was right, it was guaranteed to make my job ten times more difficult than it promised to be already.

‘The glass is standing against the wall outside,’ said Linda.

‘Anything else of interest outside?’ I asked.

‘It’s being examined now. There is a driveway at the back that gives access to the garages for this row of houses.’

‘Good. Let me know what you find, if you find anything.’ On the face of it, it appeared that someone had broken in at the rear of the house and murdered the occupants. But why? Why
murder, I mean. A burglary gone wrong? It seemed a bit heavy, even these days, for a burglar to carry a firearm, but it has happened before.

Or was that what the murderer would have me believe?

Right now I was not happy about any of it. The single shot to the head in each case looked more like an execution than a spontaneous shooting and I wondered if there was more to Mr and Mrs Light
than was immediately apparent.

‘Has the front door been examined yet?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Linda. ‘It was fitted with a mortise deadlock and a deadlock night-latch. And both were locked.’ She paused and smiled shyly. ‘Before the fire brigade
got at them, that is. The back door was also locked, again with a mortise deadlock.’

‘Bolts?’ I asked.

‘No bolts on any of the exterior doors,’ she said.

I returned to the main floor. A carpenter had arrived and was waiting for the go-ahead before setting about repairing the damage that had been done to the front door. But he’d have to
wait. He was probably getting paid by the hour anyway.

‘There’s a message on the answering machine, guv,’ said Dave.

‘Splendid,’ I said. ‘Grab the tape and we’ll analyse it at our leisure.’

Dave gave me a sorrowful look. ‘It doesn’t have a tape, guv. It’s one of those digital wire electronic gizmos.’

‘Yes, I suppose it would be,’ I said. I hadn’t got a clue what he was talking about, in fact I thought he was making it up, but I was in no position to argue. I’m a
pencil and paper man. Not much can go wrong with that. ‘I’d better have a listen, then.’

The message was terse. A man’s voice simply announced that he would be there as arranged. The caller did not identify himself, presumably because he knew that the recipient would know his
voice, but the small window on the answering machine showed ‘15:37 hrs 11 June’.

Dave dialled 1471 but the caller’s number had been withheld. So what? The last caller may not have been the one who left the message anyway.

‘Well, that doesn’t tell us much,’ I said. ‘Could be confirmation of some sort of prearranged business meeting, I suppose.’ I turned to Fellowes, who was sitting on
one of the plush sofas. ‘Any idea what this guy Light did for a living, Ted?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ said Fellowes, ‘but I reckon it paid well, whatever it was.’

‘Morning, Harry.’ DI Frank Mead stood in the doorway and nodded approvingly as he took in the luxury of the Lights’ sitting room. ‘Looks like a tricky one. I see
they’ve just taken out two bodies. Is that it or have you got a few more stacked up somewhere?’

Frank – a former Flying Squad officer – was responsible for supervising a team of twelve or so detectives who would carry out all the follow-up enquiries. A thorough investigator, he
could be trusted to get on with the job without any interference from me. And what I didn’t think of, he would.

‘No, just the two, Frank.’

‘So, what have you got for me?’

I counted off the immediate ‘actions’ on my fingers. ‘Positive ID. The local DI thinks they’re called Andrew and Kim Light. I want to know what he did for a living and
whether he was involved in anything dodgy that might have given some nutcase a reason for walking in here and topping him and his wife. Oh, and see if there were any staff: cleaning woman,
housekeeper, cook, that sort of thing. By the look of the female victim’s hands she wasn’t in the habit of doing much in the way of housework.’

Frank was busily making notes on his clipboard as I spoke. ‘House-to-house enquiries?’ he asked, glancing up.

‘Yes, ask the usual questions.’

‘And we’ll get the usual answers probably,’ said Frank drily. ‘“Well, we heard something, officer, but we thought it was a car backfiring.” Or, “We
didn’t want to bother the police.”’

‘Particularly if it was likely to interrupt their cannabis parties,’ I added, attempting to match Frank’s cynicism.

There was a commotion outside the room and I stepped into the hall. The blonde policewoman was arguing with a man near the front door. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said to me,
‘but this man says he lives here and that his name’s Andrew Light.’

‘So you’re Mr Andrew Light,’ I said, steering the man into the sitting room. He was well dressed – if slightly crumpled
– his suit, shirt, tie and shoes clearly of good quality.

‘Of course I am.’ The response was terse, hostile almost. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded, glancing at the patch of blood on the carpet where the male
victim had been found. ‘What are all you police doing here? What’s happened?’

‘I think it would be as well if you sat down, Mr Light,’ I said, affording him the courtesy of the name he claimed was his, even though I was by no means sure that he was the
rightful occupant of the house. Publicity-seekers have been known to talk their way into crime scenes before, have even been known to confess to crimes they hadn’t committed. Don’t ask
me why, but it happens. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’ Well, I thought I had. If this man proved to be Andrew Light, was I right in assuming that the woman we’d found
upstairs was, in fact, his wife? ‘Do you have any form of identification?’

The man fumbled in an inside pocket and produced a passport. It was in the name of Andrew Light, aged thirty-five, the photograph undoubtedly that of the man sitting opposite me. He also gave me
a visiting card bearing the address of the house in which we were now sitting: 27 Durbridge Gardens, Notting Hill.

His identity confirmed, I told Light as briefly as I could how the police came to be in his house and what we had found.

Light stared at me white-faced. ‘But . . . I mean . . . why . . . what . . .?’ he stuttered, before lapsing into confused silence.

‘I’m still trying to establish what happened,’ I said.

‘But are you sure? That it’s my wife, I mean.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘At first we assumed that the victims were you and your wife, and that means that there’s a rather painful task that I’ll need you to
perform.’

Light nodded slowly; he’d obviously guessed what was coming next. ‘You want me to identify her?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

Suddenly, the shock and emotion of the moment overtook Light and he buried his face in his hands, his whole body shaking as he began to sob. It was a reaction I’d seen many times
before.

‘Can I get you something?’ I asked.

Light raised his head for long enough to point to a satinwood side table that stood against the wall opposite the windows. There were a number of bottles and glasses arranged on it.
‘There’s some brandy over there.’

‘I’ll get it, sir,’ said Dave. He was always formal in the presence of members of the public.

Light took a gulp of the Courvoisier that Dave handed him, and then asked, ‘But what happened?’

‘We don’t know as yet, other than to say that both victims appear to have been shot at close range. From our initial enquiries it would seem that an intruder gained entry through a
kitchen window at the back of the house.’

‘But that’s double-glazed,’ mumbled. . .