The Marx Sisters by Barry Maitland Read Free Book Online Page B

accepted Brock’s invitation to help herself from his bag while he told her about Mrs Rosenfeldt’s ‘clue’. She groaned. ‘Geriatric Nazis are all we need. The press’ll get to hear of it, and then the whole thing will blow up in our faces when we discover the old lady had a heart attack after all.’ She peeled off several slices of salami and took a few olives.
    ‘But you don’t really think so, do you?’
    Kathy paused, and then said ‘No, sir, I don’t. I don’t know what it is, but I felt it was wrong when I first went into that flat yesterday, and the feeling’s never left me since. I know it sounds weak in the circumstances.’
    ‘Not at all, Kathy,’ Brock said. ‘I always have feelings about cases. I think you may be right. It’s just doubly important to check everything.’
    ‘Sir, can I ask you about something that Hepple raised? It’s bothered me too. This case, it’s not exactly the Manchester Poisoner, at least not yet. I was surprised the Yard wanted to get involved. And then when they said it would be you—well, it just seemed unlikely.’
    Brock smiled. ‘ “The Yard moves in mysterious ways, its blunders to perform” . . . Actually, I never really know what they’ll put me on next. Part of the attraction. I agree that this didn’t sound too promising at first, but I’m rather enjoying it. Don’t mind, do you, me tagging along?’
    ‘Oh no! Of course not. It’s great being able to work with someone like you. It was just—well, after your last case, I mean this isn’t the same sort of high-profile thing at all.’
    Brock’s previous case, the ‘City Securities Slayings’ Mr Hepple had referred to, had been in the headlines for weeks. Two young police officers had been shot dead in the City by a gang escaping with the contents of a bank’s security boxes. Brock, in charge of a team drawn from the Serious Crime Branch and Robbery Squad, had eventually identified the gang leader as Gregory Thomas North, a professional criminal with a record of violent robberies, known as Upper North because of his dangerous habit of psyching himself with stimulants before a job. On the point of arrest, North had disappeared, surfacing a few days later in South America, beyond the reach of extradition.
    ‘Everyone in Division got really worked up over that,’ Kathy said. ‘Half of us had been on the case, anyway, doing leg work for the Yard, and when it turned out the way it did . . . You must have felt terrible, sir.’
    ‘Yes, well, we may yet have a little surprise in store for friend North,’ Brock grunted. He said no more, and they continued in silence through the southern boroughs until they came out among the oak and silver birch woods around Chislehurst Common.
    Terry and Caroline Winter lived in a house called Oakdene, which was separated from the road by a lawn, rose beds and a red-brick drive, much of which was obscured by expensive silver German cars. The house belonged to the Tudorbethan school of suburban domestic architecture, built in the thirties when Lutyens’ models were still fresh and were copied with some substance and conviction. Wall panels of herring-bone-patterned red brickwork were framed by dark, heavy timbers and sheltered by a wide gabled roof, whose clay tiles were now dark green with algae nurtured by the broad overhanging boughs of oak and ash. A light visible through the diamond-paned leadlightwindows of the ground floor shone out against the gloom of the afternoon.
    Brock parked in the street and they walked to the front door, breathing in the damp, lonely smells of autumn woodland. Terry answered the door and led them across a dark panelled hall into the lounge. The central heating was up high, and he wore a black shirt and jeans, both with conspicuous designer labels. The sleeves of his shirt were loosely rolled back on his forearms, exposing a heavy gold chain on one wrist and an expensive-looking gold watch on the other. He looked younger than his