Gunrunner Read Online Free PDF Page A

pretty full life, then,’ I said. ‘I imagine they had a lot of friends.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ put in Peter Maitland. ‘Dinner parties and drinks parties, but nothing rowdy, of course. No loud music. They’ve got a swimming pool in the basement, too. Well, all of us round here have, but we don’t use ours much. But the Hammonds used to hold parties in theirs. We went to one or two. They were very generous hosts.’
    ‘Thank you for your help,’ I said, ‘and my apologies for interrupting your festivities. If and when Mr Hammond returns,’ I continued, addressing myself to both the Maitlands, ‘perhaps you’d ask him to contact me as a matter of urgency.’ I handed Peter Maitland one of my cards, but sincerely hoped that the arrangements to intercept Nicholas Hammond at Heathrow on his return, assuming he’d actually gone, would obviate the necessity of Maitland breaking the news to him.
    There was a good reason for that. It’s of invaluable assistance to a detective to watch the reaction of a man when he’s told of the murder of his wife, particularly when he’s suspected of that murder. And in the absence of any firm evidence, and based on the history of homicide, right now Nicholas Hammond had to be a front runner. Wife-killers are devious people. It’s surprising how often a bereaved man is keen to appear on television, appealing for information about his partner’s murder, only for police eventually to discover that he’s the guilty party.
    Having obtained all the information that we could, we left the Maitlands to enjoy their Christmas pudding, although I suspected that our visit had put a damper on the celebrations.
    Back at Curtis Green, DS Flynn was waiting with news.
    ‘Both Nicholas and Kerry Hammond were booked on the flight to New York’s JFK Airport that left Heathrow at twenty-hundred hours on Christmas Eve, sir. But only Nicholas Hammond turned up. He asked the passenger service agent to page his wife, but there was no response. The man I spoke to said that Hammond seemed extremely fraught that his wife hadn’t arrived.’
    ‘I wonder if he was covering his tracks,’ I suggested. ‘He could’ve been making a fuss so that his concern about his missing wife would be remembered. It wouldn’t be the first time it’d happened.’
    ‘Wouldn’t surprise me, guv,’ said Flynn, who shared most CID officers’ suspicions of the husbands of murdered wives. ‘However, when she failed to show, Hammond left his wife’s ticket at the airline desk, and asked the agent to tell her he’d gone on ahead. He said to tell her he’d meet her in New York, and that she knew the hotel they would be staying at.’
    ‘Par for the course.’ I was beginning to move Nicholas Hammond to the top of my suspect list; leaving the airport without knowing what had happened to his wife did not gel in my book. ‘Did you find out which hotel they were staying at, Charlie?’
    ‘No, guv. The man I spoke to didn’t know and he said that Hammond hadn’t mentioned it.’
    ‘If the flight left at eight o’clock, what time would it arrive in New York?’
    ‘About nine o’clock that evening local time, guv. New York is five hours behind GMT.’
    ‘Just in time for a late-night dinner à deux at Cipriani’s on Forty-Second Street.’ On one occasion in the distant past, I’d sampled that famous restaurant’s cuisine, and having seen the prices I was extremely grateful that the NYPD had picked up the tab.
    ‘We could ask the New York police to try and track him down, guv,’ suggested Dave. ‘Shouldn’t be too difficult as we know he was due to arrive at JFK at about nine o’clock New York time.’
    ‘What, and alert him to our interest? If we did that, he might never come back, Dave, and then we’d be into extradition. Assuming, of course that he had murdered his wife. Not that we’ve got any evidence. Yet!’
    ‘We won’t have long to wait, sir,’ said Flynn. ‘Hammond’s ticket was a return. He’s due