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“So he wanted us to know he had her,” Hartridge said. “Why?”
James thought back to what Gabriella had said to him in the hospital. “He wanted to punish me. To make me feel upset and powerless, because I ruined things for him yesterday by coming to Mrs. Everett’s house and disturbing him.”
He should have listened to Gabriella. She had experienced this man face-to-face, and she was a good judge of character.
“That’s . . .” Hartridge shook his head. “Vindictive.” He paused. “And odd.”
They were not dealing with anyone James had come into contact with before, that was for sure.
“So who might own a Bentley? John Crane?” He looked over at Hartridge.
“Owning a Bentley.” Hartridge frowned. “That reminds me of something, but I can’t remember what.” He sat down at his desk and began flicking through the Crane file. “Crane owned a Jaguar. His wife owned a Mini Cooper. No Bentley.”
“He could have stolen it,” Peters said.
“Go look into any reported Bentley thefts,” James ordered him. “If a Bentley’s gone missing, it would be reported.”
Peters dashed off, and James walked over to the board they had set up. “We’ve got everyone in this case pinned down except three. Our main suspect, Mr. Big or Mr. Knife; the man called Fred who dumped Gabriella and myself in that garage and then disappeared; and Paul Devenish, who’s never come in, never got in touch again since he jumped out his lawyer’s office window and ran for it.”
He hadn’t gotten in touch with anyone, James remembered. That’s why Lenny and Mr. Fischer had ended up fighting each other in their laboratory. Devenish had gone quiet on them, and the rats had turned on each other.
“Devenish,” Hartridge said. “That rings a bell.”
He began digging around on his desk, pulled out another file. “You know, I sent some PCs round to his flat to follow up on him, like you asked, and a married couple were living there. He’d rented it out to them. His father must have known he’d moved when he gave us the address, surely?”
That was interesting.
And James would agree that Sir Reginald would have known his son had let his flat out. He remembered how the old codger had made a show of looking up the address.
Bastard.
“I wonder if Sir Reginald owns a Bentley? I know Paul Devenish drives a red Berkeley Sports. I saw it parked outside the gallery.” James thrust a hand through his hair, trying to remember if the Grosvenor Square house where Sir Reginald lived had had a garage.
“The Berkeley Sports is a soft-top, though, sir,” Hartridge said, leaning over the file. “A summer car.”
A summer car? God, he was out of his depth here.
“Here it is.” Hartridge jumped to his feet, thrust the file at James. “High House, that company Golightly set up for Devenish, the one that the car Sam Nealy was driving was registered to? It also owns a black Bentley.”
James stared down at the list of assets. “When did this come in?”
“Yesterday, from Golightly. It’s taken his secretary this long to recreate the file Devenish took with him when he ran.” Hartridge lifted a hand to massage the back of his neck, then suddenly turned to scrabble through the papers on his desk. He waved the partial registration Peters had left for them in triumph. “The numbers match!”
The numbers matched. But it wasn’t Devenish in the car. It was Mr. Knife.
James thought back to John Crane’s house. The slaughter.
If Mr. Knife wanted to get rid of his competition, Sam Nealy was just the first hurdle. He would have wanted to cut things off at the source. And that was Paul Devenish.
He rubbed his eyes and looked back down at the list.
Went very still.
There was another asset. An address in Hampstead Heath.
“Hampstead Heath is a posh area, isn’t it?” he asked Hartridge.
“Very.”