Roxanne lived in Leytonstone. Not exactly Hampstead, but the station was on the Central Line and on arriving in London, she’d at least managed to find a flat within her price range. Now she was on Creed’s payroll, she could pick and choose. But really, she thought, as her train slowed down and she picked up her briefcase ready to get off, Leytonstone was good enough for her. If the past seven years had taught her nothing else, she had learned that, over time, it was possible to become accustomed to anything.
She lived on the first floor of a converted shop. Once upon a time it had been a butcher’s, but that was okay as long as she didn’t try to picture the carcasses hanging from hooks in the cold store below the ground floor. The woman who lived downstairs was a veggie, but she didn’t seem bothered by the building’s history. She was undertaking happiness research at the London School of Economics. Roxanne wondered what had prompted her to live in Leytonstone. Presumably trying to get away from the day job.
Roxanne put on a leotard and slipped a yoga tape into the video recorder. She needed to make amends for that shameful lunch of fudge, but she hadn’t wanted to brave the aerobics classes that took place each evening in Creed’s gym. Time for a little calm surrender in the privacy of her own home. The zest she’d felt in her lunch break was a distant memory. Her head had begun to throb and her limbs were aching, but she couldn’t lay all the blame on the crush of commuters on the Tube. She had left Avalon Buildings on the stroke of eight: hardly a late finish by the standards of ambitious city solicitors. Yet she felt exhausted and not just because Ben Yarrow was a hard taskmaster. At Hengist Street, she’d dipped a toe in the waters of legal practice, but she could have given it up at any time. By joining Creed, she’d made a commitment to becoming a top flight lawyer.
‘Change your shape and you can change your life,’ cooed the woman on the tape. She was a blonde in her forties, sickeningly supple.
Roxanne hadn’t under-estimated the demands of the work. There were no restrictive practices in the employment tribunal: a wet-behind-the-ears paralegal might find herself doing battle with eminent barristers and street-wise solicitor advocates. That didn’t frighten her; she’d always nourished the belief that, with experience, she might be a match for even the wiliest opponent. But her new colleagues might become curious about the stranger in their midst. She must find a way of preserving her privacy without raising eyebrows.
‘Inhale, lift those arms. Stretch up and keep your eyes on the ceiling, still with a full lung. Exhale…’
Was Chloe a threat? As Roxanne kept her eyes on the ceiling, she told herself not to imagine dangers where none existed: Chloe simply liked to talk.
‘Shall we try the Warrior Posture?’ Anyone would think this was a litigator’s training film, compulsory continuing professional education. ‘Bend your front leg and aim your thigh flat. Keep that back leg straight! Can’t you feel the gorgeous, gorgeous movement? Inhale now and up you come.’
Roxanne stretched, feeling her joints creak.
‘You did really well,’ the woman said.
‘Patronising bitch,’ Roxanne hissed as she breathed out.
Already the exercises were working. She was starting to relax, the anxieties of the day fading from her mind.
Everything was going to be fine.
Chapter Three
‘He’s sleeping, sergeant,’ the doctor said softly.
It wasn’t true. Nic seldom slept, anyway. He had closed his eyes because seeing wasn’t believing and he needed to get his brain into gear if he was ever to make sense of Ella’s resurrection.
The policeman grunted. ‘You said he was fit to be questioned.’
Nic strained to catch bits of the murmured reply. Head injury… not severe… badly shocked… keeping him in for observation… you never know.
‘This won’t take long.’
Nic heard the doctor sigh and then his footsteps, departing. The policeman bent over him; he smelt of curry. When his shoulder was jogged, Nic grunted, turned on his side, allowed his lids to ease apart. The overhead light was harsh, made him blink. The policeman resembled a slab-faced scion of the Kray family. Nic guessed he would be more at home kicking the shit out of football hooligans or anarchist agitators than conducting a murder enquiry. Assuming it was a murder enquiry.
‘Mr Gabriel, we have to ask you about what happened.’
Nic’s head was swimming. He was afraid of what he was about to be told, but he had to know. He muttered, ‘Dylan. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
The sergeant nodded. ‘Yeah, Mr Rees died at the scene.’
Nic wanted to throw up, but he felt too weak to manage it. He buried his face in the pillow, uttered a silent scream. How could he not blame himself for what had happened?
‘Sorry,’ the policeman said unapologetically, ‘but I have to press you. Can you take me through what happened at this cocktail party?’
Eventually Nic forced himself to say, ‘What happened to Ella?’
The sergeant leaned closer. Nic felt as though about to be suffocated by the fumes from a stale takeaway meal. ‘Ella?’
‘She cut his throat.’
The sergeant breathed out, a fearsome tandoori gust. ‘So you know the woman who did this?’
‘Ella Vinton, yes. She’s dead.’
‘No, Mr Gabriel, she’s still alive.’ The sergeant scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘But only just. She’s in intensive care.’
‘You don’t understand. She died five years ago.’
The policeman took his statement but made it plain he didn’t like what he was hearing. When Nic said he’d been getting pissed at the party, the interrogation became perfunctory. Even before he confessed to being a writer by profession, his credibility was already in tatters. Somehow he felt it wouldn’t help if he said he hadn’t published anything for ages. Lazy as well as unreliable; scarcely the ideal witness.
Later, a sister came to check him over. Middle-aged, spookily cheerful, like someone out of a propaganda broadcast. He half-expected her to reel off the cuts in hospital waiting times, to tell him that recruitment of nurses was at an all-time high.
‘You’ll be right as rain in no time.’
Wasn’t this the hospital where bodies had been piled high on a mortuary floor because of staff shortages? Where a gynaecologist had molested a hundred patients before being struck off? Where one in five patients contracted a fresh ailment whilst under its roof? He wasn’t reassured.
He tried raising himself up on the pillow. Every muscle in his body seemed to protest at the same time. He had a blinding headache but he didn’t want to mention it in case they told him he had to stay here.
‘I’m fine. When can I leave?’
She ignored him with the ease of long practice. ‘There. You’ve over-excited yourself. What you need now is a jolly good rest.’
Phil’s heart-shaped face, looming over his. Her expression, a characteristic mixture of irritation and excitement.
‘It’s me, Phil.’
He wanted to say Of course it bloody is, we’ve been sleeping together for months. I haven’t lost possession of all my faculties.
He managed a hoarse, ‘Hi.’
‘It’s incredible. Dylan dead. At the hand of a mystery assassin. Wow, who would believe it?’ He could almost see her mind working, wondering how it would play in the media. ‘You were almost a hero.’
‘You’re so good for my ego.’
‘Don’t be like that, you know what I mean. Anyway, frankly he’s no great loss.’
But he was my friend.
He muttered, ‘I couldn’t save him.’
That was what tormented him, so much more than the knock which had caused him to finish up here. He’d kept his eyes on the dead woman since she’d walked into the room, but he’d been too concerned with trying to fathom how she had risen from the grave. He should have stopped her carrying out her revenge.
‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Her tone suggested that someone else might have. Someone wi
th more focus, the sort of man she’d once thought he was. But it didn’t matter since she’d never liked Dylan. She frowned. ‘I wonder who the woman was.’
He didn’t want to tell her about Ella and when he feigned sleep, she didn’t hang around. His brain was fuddled, but one clear thought formed as the door closed behind her. It was never going to work with the two of them. He’d realised a long time ago that they didn’t actually have much in common, but he’d fought against the knowledge, wanting to make the thing work without being sure why.
Phil was a Public Relations agent who specialised in advising companies in crisis on how to limit the damage to their reputation occasioned by fraud, scandal and other calamities. He supposed she was what they used to call gamine. No breasts or bum, but she was beautiful. They had met at a publishers’ party and she’d told him the story of a law firm she acted for. The senior partner had sent an inflated bill to a woman client who ran a small business. The morning it arrived she drank three tumblers of whisky and pulled a plastic bag over her head. According to Phil, her clients were neither greedy nor callous, just ordinary decent folk who wanted to make an honest living and made a mistake once in a blue moon.
When he suggested that the senior partner’s gravestone ought to be licensed for dancing, she said, ‘I suppose the pressmen of the day thought the same about Hawley Harvey Crippen.’
‘Touché.’
‘I adored your book. Not that I believed a word of it. I’m sure he was as guilty as hell. But I love a good whitewash.’
‘Should I be flattered?’
‘Don’t laugh! The way you reinvented the little shit is brilliant. It’s spooky, meeting someone who can not only think himself into the mind of a murderer but even make out that he’s been sadly misunderstood. You give the old stuff a new spin. Take an all-time loser and re-brand him as a captive of the heart, I love it. Perhaps you and I ought to go into business together.’
Instead they finished up in bed together. The sex was great. She was an inexhaustible lover who liked to do fun things with strawberries and cream, handcuffs and leather, silk scarves and whips. For a while he believed the relationship might work. He understood his mistake the first time she complained about his unwillingness to repeat the formula that had made his book a word-of-mouth phenomenon. When he told her there wasn’t a formula, she’d stared as if he’d spoken in Swahili.
‘There’s a formula for everything.’
‘Not for this. I just wrote the book the way it had to be written.’
‘Fine.’ She shrugged: it was so simple. ‘Do it again.’
He didn’t want to keep thinking about her. Dylan was dead. He would never cringe again at Dylan’s lousy jokes. They would never speak again about anything. And it was his fault.
In his mind he played back that call to his mobile. Dylan’s voice booming in his ear. The king of bullshit, at the top of his form.
‘You’ll love it, I swear.’
‘A reception for learner litigators? If I wanted to commune with lost souls, I’d sign up for a pagan mass.’
Dylan guffawed, a deafening blast of noise. ‘Why are you always so cynical? Look, those kids’ souls aren’t lost. They’re about to be sold and they won’t be cheap. Come on. Think of this as a trip down memory lane. You were a hungry young advocate once. Give tomorrow’s gladiators an idea what it’s like out there in the real world. Private practice.’
‘What if I tell them to quit the law and get a life?’
‘Frankly, what else would they do?’ A conspirator’s chuckle. ‘You can spell out what a good deal I can swing for those kids. Assuming they sign up with us, that is. Valentines are sponsoring the whole shebang, no expense spared. It’s an investment. I swear, after a couple of drinks, you’ll come over all nostalgic. Reminiscing about victories snatched from the jaws of defeat. Wondering about what might have been.’
‘Balls.’
‘You were a loss to the profession, everyone says so. Can’t imagine why you gave it up. This true crime stuff is all fine and dandy, but when are you going to write another book? You can’t live on the royalties from Crippen for ever. You’re wasting your life away, do you realise?’ Dylan was on a roll now. ‘Okay, you wrote a bestseller about a famous murder case. You won a couple of prizes, that’s great. Surely you’ve got the bug out of your system by now, that’s why you’ve not written anything but the odd article in ages. You ought to be racking up the chargeable hours, doing stuff that really counts. Judicial reviews, heavyweight corporate lawsuits. I could place you tomorrow, you know that? You can name your price, I guarantee.’
‘Piss off, mate.’
‘Look, it isn’t every day you get the chance of free booze at the Mother of Parliaments. You can inhale the history. To say nothing of privilege. Hey, did you know a peer of the realm who was condemned to the gallows had the right to be hanged by a silken cord?’
‘Is that so?’
‘Don’t yawn, it’ll be fun. Peeking at the priceless wallpaper the Lord Chancellor splashes whenever he has a wee. The president of the Young Advocates’ Society featured in the last Honours List. Services to vote-rigging. He’s called in a few favours, made sure we got a cut rate for the room. You and I can go out for an Indian afterwards, chew the fat, put it down as a business expense. Food always tastes better when you’re cheating the Revenue with every mouthful.’
‘Why don’t you tell me what you’re really after?’
Dylan sniggered. ‘No fooling you, is there? Well, it just so happens, I have a story for you. There has to be a book in it. This is something extraordinary. Unique. Trust me.’
‘Now you’re definitely asking too much.’
‘Two hot-shot lawyers have died.’ Suddenly Dylan was whispering. ‘They aren’t the first, they won’t be the last.’
‘So what? Lawyers die. Didn’t I read somewhere the mortality rate for solicitors under forty is three times as bad as for other professions?’
‘Yeah, some people might quarrel with bad, but it makes you think. Seriously, there’s a connection here.’ Rhetorical pause. ‘Three people dead, and it won’t end there. I’m sure of that.’
‘Give your crystal ball a wipe.’
‘You can scoff,’ Dylan said, with pretended dudgeon. ‘This is all about murder for pleasure. I want to prevent another killing. The woman who put me on to this won’t be safe, if something isn’t done soon.’
‘What woman?’ Humouring him.
‘I had a fling with her one weekend in Oxford. That’s how I became involved. It all became too much for her. She was at her wits’ end, she needed someone to confide in. At first I thought she was off her head. I didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘You’ll find out tomorrow evening. You’re coming, right?’
‘Tell me now.’
‘You must be joking. It will take hours to explain. I’ve checked her story. Jesus, it’s bizarre. No wonder she’s spooked, she’s up to her neck in it. The first to die was a boy she’d slept with. This was years ago, but she never got over it. A couple of times she’s taken an overdose, once she cut her wrists. I’ve seen the marks.’ Dylan sighed. He was talking as much to himself as to Nic. ‘She’s so mixed up, she’ll never utter a word to anyone else. Twisted kind of loyalty, I guess. She made me swear to forget what she’d told me. I gave a promise, just to keep her quiet.’
Dylan made a lot of promises to women, just to keep them quiet. Nic said, ‘What are you on?’
‘Nothing, not even the humblest little joint. But we are talking about a craving here. An addiction to murder.’ Dylan sighed. ‘I’ve kept all this to myself for long enough. I’m afraid something may happen to her. It would be so easy.’
‘Okay, okay, you win.’
Dylan teased him with a chuckle. ‘After the last young advocate has sloped off home, I’ll give you the low-down. Assuming I don’t get lucky, in which case you may have to be patient a little while longer. But I’m n
ot wasting your time, promise. This is a story about seizing the power of life and death. Trust me. This is a story that will take your breath away.’
And now a dead woman had taken Dylan’s breath away, before he had time to spin his yarn. All he’d managed were those odd last words.
Why not jazz?
Nic rubbed his eyes. He knew about bereavement, about the dull ache that lingered long after others expected you to get on with your life. Losing Dylan wasn’t the same as losing family, but Phil was wrong: it was a loss, all the same. One more empty place in his life. Funny, he’d never thought of it before, but in a strange kind of way Dylan reminded him of his father. Did that explain why he’d always relished the company of his scallywag friend? For Bryn Gabriel had been a story-teller too.
Chapter Four
‘Let me have a love contract?’
Joel Anthony was teasing her, Roxanne decided. Or maybe not. With Joel, it was hard to tell. His face was straight; surely he wasn’t flirting? He was willowy and handsome with elegantly manicured fingernails and a gold stud gleaming from his ear. When she’d first met him, at the interview, she’d assumed he was gay.
‘A love contract?’ she repeated. She leaned back in her chair, annoyed with herself for being baffled and sounding naive.
He smiled. ‘Not come across the term before?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be, I should have explained. It’s an American idea. Dreamed up by lawyers acting for employers who are sick of being sued for millions of dollars when a relationship at work goes sour. Say two colleagues have an affair, then one of them moves on. If the other can’t come to terms with rejection, the next move may be a harassment suit.’
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