by Tim Hoy
Honor Role is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An Alibi Ebook Original
Copyright © 2019 by Tim Hoy
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
ALIBI is a registered trademark and the ALIBI colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN 9781101966471
Cover design: Marietta Anastassatos
Cover images: Shutterstock
randomhousebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Dedication
By Tim Hoy
About the Author
Since leaving Sussex for London NW8—a thankfully quiet part of St. John’s Wood—my son, Jonathan, and I had kept our lives in order, barely, through the divine intercession of Mademoiselle Mazarine Binet, age twenty, who came to us from deepest Brittany. Mazarine lived in and cooked on weeknights. I arrived home to hearty meals, a good and generous glass of red, and the sound of Mazarine and my son nattering in French. Five-year-old Jonathan was a budding force of nature, tearing through childhood mostly with a smile. Mazarine kept him fed, happy, and safe. She was, as a friend said, our own au pair extraordinaire. For me, a single mother with a full-time-and-then-some job on the Metropolitan Police, Mazarine proved her worth time and again. I should have known it couldn’t last. Karma, remember, loves to mess with us.
One spring morning, in her by-then-proficient English, Mazarine informed me she’d decided to go back to school. I applauded her initiative, until she added she’d been accepted at the University of Nantes. God forbid she avail herself of the solid higher education on offer in England, which I would have gladly subsidized! Mais non, she was French; she wanted France. Kindly, Mazarine gave a summer’s notice, which I thought would allow time to find a suitable replacement.
Details of the rejected Mazarine candidates could fill a book, one I’ll never write. The heroin addict got my vote for worst of the lot, but he had stiff competition. In the end, the one I took may have been the least likely.
When nineteen-year-old Jabirah Rahman rang our doorbell, my first thought was to turn her away, to tell her politely it wouldn’t do. Not that she arrived dirty, high, or otherwise impaired; she was perfectly groomed, clothed in a striking salwar kameez. A scarf loosely covered her hair.
The problem that afternoon wasn’t Jabirah. It was me. It was my reaction to her headscarf—all the prejudice and preconceptions my fulsome mind associated with the placement of a piece of fabric. At the door I offered no smile, only judgment. I’m not a big fan of religion. That’s putting it tactfully. My deepest disapproval is reserved for those denominations that seem little more than the half-baked notions of some man—the “leader,” the “prophet,” whatever name he’s taken or been given—to keep women obedient, submissive, second-class. Some claim God grants them the right to have multiple wives, but if one of those wives tries the same, they’ll stone her to death. Such nonsense! The extent of my understanding was that Muslim women must cover their bodies lest they incite the lust of men, a notion I find both silly and insulting. So when I opened my door on that warm, sunny day to a woman with her head covered for reasons other than rain, I wasn’t sunny or warm.
“Yes?” I asked, Greenland-cold. In winter.
“I’ve come about the nanny position?” she said, her voice hesitant, the statement more a question. “My name is Jabirah Rahman.”
I paused too long before answering, knowing I was being rude. I knew better. After all, this person on my front step had done nothing to cause offense. She’d simply dressed with care for a job interview, full stop.
“I’m Tessa Grantley,” I said. “Please come in.” I never told Jabirah how close I came to saying the position had been filled, or whatever other fib entered my mind.
As soon as I closed the door, Jabirah removed the headscarf, which made her even more beautiful. I calmed. She followed me to the kitchen. I offered her tea, which she accepted. I’d expected a brief quarter hour of worthless small talk, after which I’d walk her to the door and out of my life. How wrong I was.
Jabirah came with strong references as well as a recently received certificate in child care. Her voice held the tinge of an accent. She had, she explained, been born in northern Pakistan. A decade ago her family had immigrated to Britain. My initial read was that she was a kind, intelligent you
ng woman, but animosity blinded me. I’m not proud of myself for that.
After a few minutes of awkward chatting, Jabirah said, “Perhaps I should go.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Perhaps the position has been filled?”
“You wouldn’t be sitting here if it had,” I replied.
“I see,” she said and added, with irony, “Ms. Grantley, I’d hoped to care for your son and your home. I have no intention of turning Jonathan into an Islamic terrorist, but I would like to keep him happy, healthy, and safe. That, I’d be good at.”
Jabirah stood to take her leave. It took me a second to recover from the punch. Something between a gasp and a laugh escaped from me. Shocked, I rose. I took her hand in both of mine.
“Okay, I’m going to press the rewind button,” I said, “if you’ll let me. Please sit down and start from the beginning—after I apologize, which I’m trying to do even though I sound like a complete fool. I am sorry.”
Jabirah smiled and sat. Her body, until then tense, relaxed. We talked for nearly two hours. I was honest, putting my bigotry on display. Jabirah swatted it down with finesse. She explained, for example, how wearing a headscarf could be liberating, expressing pride in one’s culture while keeping unwanted attention at bay, an idea that astonished me until I heard her out. When she left, she had a job. And I’d had a life lesson. Jabirah changed my life.
For almost two years, Jabirah Rahman was the glue that made our house a home. She kept all of us nourished. She made us happy. I believe we made her happy too.
* * *
—
My first visit with Mr. Frederick Hayworth brought to mind a line from a song my father used to sing when I was little: “Say I look nice when I’m not.” Freddy, as everyone called him, looked nice. It didn’t take long to find out he wasn’t. Of course, the first time I saw him I knew nothing about the man, except that he was dead.
Mr. Hayworth, only thirty-one, met his untimely demise in a smart riverside flat—in its master bedroom en suite lav to be exact—pants crunched to his ankles. Hayworth owned the flat, which was smack on the South Bank and couldn’t have come cheap. The first photos of his body to hit my inbox brought back something toxic my not-so-sainted mum used to say—one of those casually cruel shells she lobbed during what she referred to as the “ordeal” of raising me: “No matter how careful, someday you’re going to step in shit.”
If memory serves, that shell burst after I’d won a spelling bee. Ever the glass half-empty with Mum.
Hayworth didn’t step in shit. Let’s just say he left a parting gift.
Once I’d pulled his financials, it appeared that Freddy, as he was called, had also left a significant stash of money. Add to this a draft will, unsigned. Polish it off with a trail of broken hearts. Oh, and a few thousand “fans,” which we’ll get to in good time.
Freddy hadn’t been to work in two days. He hadn’t phoned in sick, which was “not like him,” colleagues insisted. The voicemail on his landline was full, his mobile battery dead. On request, the building porter had taken a look, poor fellow. Seek and ye shall find. The coroner estimated Hayworth had been dead those two days. Initial indications suggested a heart attack, rare but not unheard of in someone his age. Surprisingly, however, the autopsy found a lethal amount of cyanide, which he’d likely ingested while “crouched on the crapper,” as my partner DI Peter Lazarus put it. Eloquence is such a gift.
Hayworth, however, wasn’t actually found seated; the kick of the toxin most likely ejected him. He convulsed on the tiled floor, if only briefly, before expiring, eyes shocked open. In death, Hayworth lay hunched in a fetal curl giving a sad circularity to his too-brief existence. Not a noble way to go, but the truth was, Mr. Hayworth pleased the eye even in disheveled death. A striking face, chiseled olive skin with eyes a rare purplish hue. Good teeth, and his hair—think of the only time you ever hear the word luxuriant—a longish, wavy brown. I scrolled through the snaps taken when the first responders went over the premises. At the time, it wasn’t pegged a crime scene for it didn’t look as if a crime had been committed, other than one self-inflicted. When the autopsy found poison, the death was assumed to be suicide. Quick as a blink, it went off our books. Mr. Hayworth would answer to his God, if any, not to us. Things might well have stopped there, had Peter not made a passing remark.
Peter and I had been asked to have a look, if only to confirm the obvious, that the victim and perpetrator were one and the same. We perused notes and photos compiled by emergency services and the first uniforms on the scene. Upon finding the body, the porter had rung 999.
“What the fuck’s wrong with bed, or a comfy sofa?” Peter commented. “I mean, the toilet? He wanted to be found on the loo? Fucking nut job.”
“Loo adjacent,” I amended. “Do you honestly think someone tormented enough to take his own life gives a you-know-what about location?”
“A shit? Actually yes. It’s a statement, Tessa. A final fuck-you, or fuck-off. Maybe both.”
He had a point. Rarely is offing oneself intentionally paired with a bodily function. So the question was “Why did Hayworth do what he did the way he did?” Which brought us back to Peter’s lament: Who would commit suicide while using the toilet? Peter uttered the words and promptly forgot his point. I was the one who lingered on them. We’d been assigned the case, but the clear intention was to open and close it pretty much in one go. Our superiors don’t like open cases. They want things checked off our list of things to do, not added to it.
There was no indication anyone else had been in the flat at the time of death. Freddy Hayworth was single, itinerant, and living accordingly, not a pet or plant for company. His place felt more hotel than home: immaculate, expensive yet chilled, all the warmth of a fresh martini. The furniture had been picked for show, not comfort or utility. Everything in its place. Almost no inkling of the occupant’s personality or lack thereof, save a few mildly impressive art prints hanging about. Lots of mirrors, though, including a wall of them to the side of the deceased’s bed. Apparently, Mr. Hayworth liked the view. His own, that is. So, wouldn’t someone so vain and fastidious care where and how his corpse would be found?
Lazarus was right. Didn’t a bed seem more likely? A favorite chair? A single rose centered on his chiseled chest? Maybe not, maybe the late Freddy Hayworth had gotten bad news. That final straw can break quickly, leaving little time for event planning. All we knew was Frederick Hayworth had consumed something that killed him. He ingested it voluntarily. The right thing to do was to check out the death scene as well as the contents of his stomach. Ask a few questions. Get a few answers. We probably wouldn’t take long on this. It was more a following of procedure, and maybe a showing of respect. That, at least, was the plan.
The thing is, I have a habit of deviating from plans.
Jabirah asked me the question that first time we talked. No surprise there. Sooner or later everyone did, even half a decade on. The words and tone varied but always worked out to this: “What happened to your husband?”
Such a loaded question! Loaded—like a gun. How fitting. What happened to Alec Hanay? Where do I begin? Not with the truth, surely. The thing is, people thought they knew the truth. The world knew Alec, his celebrity parents, the tragedy surrounding them (and him), the wife and child (me and Jonathan) bereft when he disappeared. What they didn’t know was how fundamentally complicit Alec was in all the bad that stalked his short life. They didn’t know that my husband, for we had wed, the father of my son, had murdered at least five women. Cold-blooded murder times five, for which he was indeed arrested, charged, tried, and—thanks much to me—wrongly acquitted. His guilt was a truth I shared with no one. Now, Alec was gone, presumed dead; Jonathan was alive, well, and my responsibility. I’d no intention of branding my child the son of a killer. Can you imagine? Soon Jonathan would start school. Think of the taunts he would suffer
had the truth been told; his father’s evil lingering, damaging our only child. Who could blame me for my decision? Anyone who did could bow out of my life.
I alone know Alec’s secrets. They‘re safe with me.
My response, then, to that constant question of Alec’s whereabouts was consistent if intentionally obtuse.
“We lost him,” I told Jabirah. “At sea.”
Such a perfect reply, for it was both true and a lie. Lost is the right word, for I’d lost Alec Hanay long before he disappeared. I’d lost the man I thought I’d married, the gentle, good soul I’d fallen for. Only later did I learn Alec had no soul. That or he’d sold it to the devil long before I had the misfortune to run into him.
Jabirah offered sympathy: “You must miss him.”
“I do,” I said, and I did. I didn’t add that I’d missed my husband long before he left us. As Alec’s true nature emerged, the man I’d loved and wed disappeared well before I last saw him.