‘Maybe he was a worse driver than people realised?’
‘This one wasn’t on the road. Seems that Lansing was a keen angler. It was a Saturday afternoon and he was fishing at his favourite spot on the River Mole when a radio-controlled model plane from the nearby flying club swooped on him.’
Heck frowned. ‘Actually swooped on him?’
‘Well …’ Gemma became thoughtful. ‘It’s difficult to say. Apparently it came down from a significant height, and it was big, not some toy – and it got close enough to knock him into the river and send him over the weir.’
‘Bloody hell …’
‘Only the vigilance of another angler saved his life. Local plod investigated the incident, but the plane was never recovered – presumably that went over the weir too and got washed away. To date, no member of the flying club will admit either responsibility or having seen anything, even though all were out in force that day in the next field.’
‘Could be a coincidence.’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘Well, real-life coincidences are few and far between, I suppose. Certainly when they’re that extreme.’
‘My thoughts too,’ she said.
‘Did the local lads do a thorough job?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘What made your mum so suspicious? I mean there must be more than that.’
‘Nothing solid. It was a gut feeling, apparently.’ Gemma made a vague gesture. ‘Sometimes she’s a bit oversensitive to this sort of thing. All those years married to a copper, I suppose. She reckons Harold Lansing was strangely … well, to use her words, “carefree and innocent for a guy with so much dosh”. He didn’t have a driver, for example, or any professional security. Used to go fishing on his own, lived out in the sticks on his own – all that stuff. Sort of unintentionally made himself a target.’
‘But he wasn’t robbed?’
‘Not as far as we’re aware.’
Heck gave it some thought. ‘It’s a mystery for sure.’
‘Which is why I’d like you to pop down there and check it out. Just cast your eye over it. See if anything strikes you as odd.’
‘Okay.’ He nodded as a waitress handed them two dessert menus. ‘Thanks for lunch anyway.’
‘Like I say, it’s the least I can do,’ Gemma said. ‘Is Grinton having a party to celebrate the Hood conviction?’
‘There’ll be a few drinks. Low-key. I’ve told him I’ll give it a miss.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘Yeah.’ Deciding against a slice of delicious-sounding banoffee pie, he closed the menu and laid it on the table. ‘I need to catch up on some sleep.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t find the Surrey job too stressful. This time there’ll be no ticking clock.’
‘Let’s hope not.’
‘No … seriously.’ She signalled to the waitress for the bill. ‘Seems like a straight-up case. Someone had it in for Harold Lansing.’
‘We think …’
She eyed him guardedly. ‘Those instincts of yours again?’
‘And yours, ma’am. I know you of old – whatever favour your mum asked, you wouldn’t be sending me down to Surrey if something about it didn’t make you twitchy.’
If there was one county where Heck’s investigations hadn’t taken him before, it was Surrey. Violent crime wasn’t, and never had been, an exclusively urban problem, but if there were any common denominators they tended to be deprivation and despair, and though Surrey wasn’t free of these, it had deservedly earned its reputation as the English county that had ‘made it’.
Though it boasted a green, leafy landscape with much agriculture, it was still densely populated; the lion’s share of this concentrated in suburban villages and affluent commuter towns servicing London. It had naturally beautiful rural features such as the North Downs, Greensand Ridge and the Devil’s Punch Bowl, but it was also home to numerous multinationals – Esso, Toyota, Nikon and Philips – and had the highest GDP per capita of any county in the UK. Heck was sure he’d once heard it said that Surrey claimed to have more millionaires than anywhere else in the whole of Great Britain.
But even by those standards, the district he followed the map to was a verdant haven, unbroken vistas of meadow and common alternating with beech groves and scenic tracts of rolling, flower-filled woodland. The occasional houses were rambling, timber-framed affairs – Tudor or Jacobean in style – usually located amid lush, landscaped parks. The house he was actually looking for, Rosewood Grange, stood alone in woodland but was a touch more modern – Georgian apparently, which only made it 300 years old – but he couldn’t see much of it when he arrived as it stood back from the road, only its upper portions, its curly gables and even rows of tall, redbrick chimneys, showing above the yew hedge and thick shrubbery standing in front of it.
According to the thirty-page accident report, there was one entrance/exit to Rosewood Grange, a single driveway, which emerged about fifty yards further on between two tall brick gateposts. Though there was no actual gate, this gateway was located at a gentle but awkward crook in the road, which would have made it quite dangerous for anyone leaving the property by car, as they’d be blinded to oncoming traffic from either direction. That said, the circular convex mirror, which Heck saw fitted on a tree trunk opposite, about seven feet up from the ground, should have been more than adequate to show whether or not the way was clear. He parked on the verge, climbed out, and took in the air. It was another warm day, billows of fleecy cloud static in a pebble-blue sky. In either direction, the sun-dappled road dwindled off beneath natural arches formed by interwoven branches. Birds twittered and insects hummed, but aside from that there was peace and quiet. He had the immediate, strong impression that traffic around here was scarce.
Despite all this, it wasn’t difficult to see where the collision had occurred, or just how catastrophic it had been.
Some ten yards along the road from the drive entrance there were swathes of torn and blackened vegetation on the opposing verge. Even now, over two weeks later, chips of paint and glass, and slivers of twisted metal, were visible along the roadside. Thirty yards beyond that, several feet past the kerb, a partially uprooted hornbeam sagged backwards into the meadow behind. Its trunk was badly charred but also extensively gashed, as though by a colossal impact. This, it seemed, was where the flying Porsche had come to rest. Heck pivoted around, surveying as much of the scene as he could. The Traffic unit who’d investigated this RTA would have done a thorough job – of that there was no question. Except that, as far as they were concerned what had happened here was an accident, not a homicide. In addition, whatever they’d discovered, whoever they’d eventually deemed to be at fault, there was no one left alive to prosecute – so how much care and attention would they really have exercised?
Heck glanced at his watch. It was just past noon, and his appointment with DCI Will Royton at Reigate Hall Police Station wasn’t due until two – which perhaps gave him enough time to make a few quick enquiries of his own.
It was a dry day with no rain forecast, and Heck was only wearing casuals – jeans, a T-shirt and training shoes. But just to be on the safe side, in case someone came along and felt like asking questions, he donned a yellow/green high visibility doublet with the word POLICE stencilled on the back before trudging between the gateposts