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Chapter 21
Tuesday 16th February
It did me good to have a few drinks and a catch-up with Ellie after work yesterday; as I drive northbound on the M5 towards Birmingham at a steady seventy miles an hour, I’m feeling a little more like myself than I did this time yesterday morning. I’m still anxious, still permanently exhausted. But I’ve decided to just take it all a day at a time for now, for what else can I do? So much could change in the next six weeks or so. David in Cardiff might not die; the police may unearth something that leads them to whoever is behind all this at any moment.Imay not need to do anything at all. So, I’ve vowed to stay calm and carry on, to use a cliché.
I arrive at Topaz Casino just before midday, pulling into a parking space right opposite the front entrance. Unsurprisingly, the large car park is three-quarters empty at this hour, and after locking my car I stand there for a moment, shivering as a bitter wind tears at my coat and whips my hair across my face while I take in the impressive frontage of the building. It’s huge, ten floors tall, all reflective grey glass and concrete, its name emblazoned across the front in blue neon. There’s an external lift, also walled in glass, moving slowly upwards, and at the grand pillared entrance I can see two doormen, slick in matching sharp black suits. I’ve read up on the casino; it’s the bigger of the two owned by Jane Holland, and this one is, in fact, reported to be one of the largest in the UK outside London. Open twenty-four hours a day, it has more than two hundred slot machines, a hundred gaming tables and a poker room that can accommodate a hundred and fifty players, with a monthly tournament that attracts gamblers from miles around. It employs more than two hundred people and is almost as famous for its food as it is for its gaming, with whisky, gin and cocktail bars and several restaurants serving an eclectic mix of Indian and western cuisines.
When I give my name at the door I’m ushered past with a polite nod and pointed in the direction of a long reception desk, topped with what looks like glittery silver-grey marble. There are a man and a woman, both also dressed in black – he in a suit similar to those of the doormen, her in a simple shift dress – tapping on keyboards behind it. The woman looks up and smiles as I approach.
‘Mary Ellis? Stella is expecting you. She’s waiting in the office. Let me take you up.’
She leads me, disappointingly, to an internal lift –maybe the fancy external one is for high-rolling gamblers only, I think – and presses the button for the seventh floor. We emerge into a wide, carpeted corridor, its walls adorned with several large pieces of colourful abstract modern art, and I follow her as she walks swiftly to a door at the far end and taps smartly on it.
‘Come in!’ calls a voice, and my escort opens the door, smiles briefly at me again and then turns and walks away, as a tall blonde woman standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite strides towards me, hand outstretched.
‘Mary, nice to meet you. Stella Clayforth,’ she says. Her accent is broad Brummie, and although I’ve never thought of myself as particularly short at five foot nine, she towers above me. Six foot, maybe? She’s broad-shouldered and heavy-busted, wearing low-heeled, snake-print court shoes with slim-leg black jeans and a blue silk shirt, sparkling gold hoops in her earlobes. Her eyes are dark grey, and her hair is pulled back into a neat chignon.
She looks very different from her cousin, I think, remembering the photographs of the murdered Jane Holland, who was a petite, slender brunette.
‘Lovely to meet you too,’ I say. ‘And thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me. I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you. It’s been a pretty dreadful time,’ she says, and a stricken expression flashes across her face. She leads me to a burgundy-coloured leather sofa, next to which is a low table bearing white coffee cups, a tall cafetière and a plate of delicious-looking miniature pastries. She asks me how I like my coffee and pours it as I take in the room, which is a spacious, bright office, the desk glass-topped with steel legs, a row of sleek metal storage cabinets lined up behind it. There’s modern art in here too, splashes of colour against white walls, and the sofa and two matching leather chairs make a comfortable and perfectly positioned seating area in front of the huge windows with their far-reaching views across the city.
Stella sits down on one of the chairs, and when we’ve both taken a few sips of coffee and exchanged some pleasantries about the weather and how changeable it’s been recently, I pull my notebook, pen, and voice recorder out of my bag, check that she’s happy for me to record our chat, and repeat the story I told her on the phone, and the same one I told Alastair Turner: that I’m writing a piece on various recent murders which seem to have stumped police.
‘Well, Jane’s certainly fits the bill,’ she says. ‘I literally have no clue why anyone would want to kill her. She was just the nicest, kindest—’
Her voice breaks suddenly, and she clears her throat.
‘Sorry. I just don’t understand it, you know? Especially as no money was taken or anything. She must have been targeted for some other reason – I mean, it wasn’t exactly random, was it? Whoever did it came to her house, knocked on her door, and she let them in, for God’s sake. The police say that doesn’t necessarily mean she knew whoever it was; they say he could easily have been a stranger, someone who just managed to give her some really good reason to let him through the door. Jane was a sweetie, big on charity work, you know? If someone gave her a sob story …’
She shakes her head, her eyes sad.
‘Sorry, listen to me prattling on. What do you need to know for your story, Mary?’
I smile at her.
‘No, don’t worry, this is all good background. Do you think that’s what happened then? Somebody gave her a sob story at the door and persuaded her to let them in?’
She shrugs, her sparkling earrings bobbing.
‘Maybe. I mean, she was a very savvy businesswoman – she didn’t suffer fools or anything like that. Don’t get me wrong – she wasn’t a soft touch, but she had such a kind heart. And if we’re ruling out someone she knew killing her – because I really, really can’t imagine that – then maybe that’s what happened. Somebody came to her door saying they needed help or something, and she let them in. But I don’t know, Mary. Nobody knows; that’s the problem.’
She sighs.
‘It’s certainly a mystery,’ I say. ‘So, what do you do, Stella? Do you actually work here? Is this your office?’
Another shake of the head.
‘No, this was actually Jane’s room. I thought it might be nice for you to see where she worked, get a feel for her maybe? I do work here at the casino though, yes. I’ve run bars in Birmingham for the past ten years or so, and Jane asked me to join her here a while back, to join the board of directors and head up that side of things. We have three bars, all very different, so it’s good fun. Well,wasgood fun. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to have fun here again now that Jane’s gone.’
She sighs again and picks up her cup. I nod, remembering the few details Jess was able to give me when I asked her about the Jane Holland investigation. She’d mentioned that the casinos were to be kept going after Jane’s death, run by a board of directors, but that it wasn’t currently believed that financial gain was a motive for the murder. She’d also mentioned that Jane had three cousins whom she was close to, but I hadn’t realised that one of them also worked with her.
‘Are any of Jane’s other relatives employed here too?’ I ask.
‘Not as such,’ Stella replies. ‘I mean, not full-time. I have two teenagers – actually, Amy is nineteen and Andrew has just turned twenty now, so not really teenagers anymore. They do a bit of bar work here, and our cousin Gerry’s son – he’s older – does a bit of security now and then. So yes, she was good about sharing out work when people needed it. But I’m the only one who’s ever worked here full-time. We were close, you see, Jane and I. More like … more like sisters, really.’
Her eyes fill with tears, and she stands up abruptly and walks to the window, wiping at her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
