‘She works on a Sunday?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘Not normally. She’d agreed to come in to help clear up after the party. Her husband had brought her over. He’s a car mechanic in a local garage, two kids – but she’ll tell you all this. It’s hard to get her to stop talking, to be honest.’
‘You let her in?’
‘She didn’t give us much choice. She said she wasn’t leaving until she’d seen that Mrs le Mesurier was OK, and then Mrs le Mesurier came down and the two of them almost fell into each other’s arms. In the end, it seemed easier to let her stay. We’d already moved the body by then and the main crime scene is across the garden, not in the house, so there didn’t seem any harm in it. She could look after Mrs le Mesurier and while she was at it I asked if she might be able to rustle up some lunch. Those steak and kidney pies were very good. But they were small.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘I can’t tell you that exactly. I left the house to get that information together and to talk to some of the people who were here last night. I hear you’ve been doing the rounds, by the way, Hawthorne, making lots of new friends. Have you got anywhere yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Just be sure to tell me when you do. Anyway, according to Mrs Carlisle, the two women had lunch together and then Mrs le Mesurier announced that she wanted to go out for a walk. She said she needed some fresh air and insisted that she wanted to be on her own, but she’d be back in an hour.’
‘And you let her go?’ Hawthorne said. There was a note of incredulity in his voice.
‘I wasn’t here.’ Torode was offended. ‘She spoke to Wilson and he said yes. He’s the forensic coordinator and not bad at his job, but of course it was bloody stupid, letting her leave the house.’
‘So where were you?’
‘I was over in the Buggery or the Snuggery, or whatever it’s called.’
Hawthorne didn’t comment on this. ‘Did she take a car?’ he asked.
‘She went on foot. Mrs Carlisle went up and did the bedroom, changed the sheets and all the rest of it, then waited for her to come back. Except she didn’t. She went out at two o’clock. Since then, there’s been no sign of her.’
‘Have you tried calling her?’
‘Her mobile’s upstairs.’
Hawthorne considered. ‘Where is Mrs Carlisle?’
‘Through here. But I’m warning you, you’ll find it hard to get a word in edgeways.’
Nora Carlisle was sitting in the sun lounge, perched on a wicker chair. The walls had been slid back into their correct positions, creating a much smaller space, hemmed in by potted plants. This was where the band had played the night before. She was a small, neat, serious woman, aged about fifty. Torode introduced us and we sat down on a sofa opposite her.
‘This must be very upsetting for you,’ Hawthorne began.
‘Of course it is. Of course it is. I’ve worked for Mrs Lem for twelve years. To come here this morning and find all these police officers here and the house turned upside down, well, I couldn’t believe it. And then I heard! Well, I’m telling you, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do Mr Lem any harm. He’s done so much for the island … not that he was ever here that often. He was a very successful businessman, always jetting off all around the world. Mrs Lem was in a real state when I got here. The two of them were a perfect couple and I don’t care what people say. He never came home without something special for her. She loved him and he loved her. You can take it from me.’
‘So tell me about Mrs le Mesurier’s movements today.’
‘She was very glad to see me, poor thing. You’d have thought somebody would have been looking after her, but she was all on her own with complete strangers rampaging around the place. I left her in the bedroom while I did the housework and made her some lunch and after we’d eaten she said she wanted to go out. That was two o’clock. I wanted to go with her, but she insisted she’d be all right on her own.’
‘She didn’t say where she was going.’
‘She said she wasn’t going far, that she’d be back in an hour or so, but when it got to four o’clock I got worried about her. I mean, after what she’d seen with Mr Lem in the Snuggery, she wasn’t herself, poor thing. I blame myself, really. I shouldn’t have let her go out without me. I could see she was still upset. And when it got to four fifteen, I knew something was wrong and straight away I called Mr Matheson and Dr Queripel – they’d always been close to her – but they hadn’t seen her. I tried some of her other friends … she keeps an address book with their numbers by her bed. None of them had seen her. So then I went and told the police officers that they needed to do something. But would they listen to me? They were far too busy packing up to get home. So that was another hour wasted. Finally, I put my foot down. I said there was obviously someone dangerous on the island – I mean, anyone could have told them that – and that if anything had happened to her it would be down to them. And that was when they called their boss – not that he’s been much help.’ She scowled at Torode. ‘I mean, where is she? She can’t just have disappeared.’
‘How well do you know Mrs le Mesurier?’
‘I told you. I’ve been with her for twelve years. And although I wouldn’t say this to anyone, I’m not just her housekeeper. I like to think of her as a friend. She’s always asking after my family and she’s generous too. There’s always an envelope at Christmas and presents for my girls.’ She sniffed. ‘People may say bad things about her. Well, of course they would. She’s wealthy and she’s gorgeous and she has all this. But she’s one of the most good-hearted people I’ve ever met. Look at the school! Both my girls went to St Anne’s and she’s always helping with books for the library and prizes for sports day. She took twenty of the children to London once – to the Natural History Museum – and it all came out of her own pocket. The coach, the ferry, everything. That’s the sort of person she is, and if someone’s hurt her … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
I looked out of the window. It wasn’t anywhere near dark yet, but the sun had sunk low in the sky and I realised that it was too late to begin a search. Mauve shadows stretched across the lawn, the silent bulk of the Snuggery beyond, and for some reason I found myself thinking of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. When I was at school, I’d played Caliban (although I’d auditioned for Ariel) and I recalled the lines:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
But the noises on this isle were all bad. Perhaps it had come with the Nazis when they built their labour camps and had been lurking ever since, but I felt it now: a malign presence that had somehow insinuated itself into Alderney. The macabre death of Charles le Mesurier, the disappearance of his wife, the rancour surrounding the power line, the crimes of Derek Abbott … they were all part of it.
‘You said people say bad things about her,’ Hawthorne remarked. He paused. ‘What people? What things?’
‘Well …’ Mrs Carlisle hesitated. ‘Mrs Lem was an actress when they met. She used to appear in his online promotions and when they got married there were people who said she was only in it for the money, that she’d managed to spin the wheel in her own favour, that sort of thing. But that wasn’t true. I told you. It may not have been a conventional marriage, but they were happy with it and it worked.’
‘Did she ever bring anyone back here?’
Nora Carlisle looked at Hawthorne with disdain. ‘How would I know?’
‘Well, you made her bed. I’d imagine it would be fairly obvious.’
‘That’s a wicked thing to say and I can’t imagine what gives you the right to make such accusations.’ The housekeeper looked to Deputy Chief Torode as if he could put a stop to this line of questioning. ‘She would never have behaved that way. She wasn’t like that at all.’
‘You never met a man called Jean-François Berthold?’
‘I’ve never heard that name.’
/> ‘When she went out at two o’clock, did she say she was going to meet someone?’
‘Not to me. She just said she wanted a walk.’
Helen had left her car – a Land Rover Discovery – outside the house. It had been parked there when we arrived. So wherever she had gone, it couldn’t have been far.
‘Is there anything else you want to know?’ Mrs Carlisle asked. For the first time she sounded tired, as if all the talking had worn her out.
‘No. You’ve been very helpful.’ Hawthorne smiled.
‘Well, I’ll go home then. There’s no point my staying here now.’
She bundled herself out of the chair and left the room.
‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly simple explanation for all this,’ Torode remarked, lazily uncurling himself from the sofa. ‘She probably felt uncomfortable sitting here with the police around. And having that woman here all day … that would have done anyone’s head in! My guess is she’s gone to the pub.’
‘Have you rung the pubs?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Have you even checked that she’s still on the island?’
Torode frowned. ‘Actually, I hadn’t thought of that. We could put a call into the local airline.’
‘She had a private jet.’
‘Oh. Right. Well, we’ll look into it. Anything else?’
‘Yes. I’d like to go upstairs.’
‘She’s not there.’
‘No. But her phone is.’
We went back up to the bedroom we had visited only that morning. Everything was very clean and dust-free. Mrs Carlisle had made the bed, puffing up the pillows, arranging silk cushions and placing a small white teddy bear holding a sachet of dried lavender in the middle of it all. I had thought the room, with its elaborate furniture and excessive ornamentation, very much a reflection of its occupant. Without her, it felt empty and strange.
Sure enough, there was a pink iPhone on the dressing table. Torode picked it up. ‘I assume this is hers,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how you’re going to break into it without a passcode.’
‘I’ve got someone in London who may be able to help,’ Hawthorne muttered. But even as he spoke, he was rifling through the address book that Mrs Carlisle had mentioned. It had been on the bedside table, an expensive thing with gold-edged pages and a padded cover with a Liberty pattern. He turned to the back and smiled. ‘No surprises here,’ he said. ‘Credit cards, computers, mobiles, the lot. Seems that “Mrs Lem” liked to keep all her passwords in one place.’
‘Very foolish of her,’ Torode said. ‘Anyone could have found it.’
‘I just did.’ Hawthorne took the iPhone from the police officer and entered the code to unlock it. He quickly scrolled through the most recent text messages, reading them intently. When he looked up, he was uneasy. ‘You should see this,’ he said.
Torode and I moved closer as Hawthorne held out the screen and showed us a chain of communication between Helen le Mesurier and an unknown correspondent, the panels alternating white and blue. This is how it read:
What happened last night?
I saw you leave with Charles. Into the sunggery. WTF?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I SAW YOU!!!!
Who did you tell?
I didn’t tell anyone why are you even asking me that?
We may have problems. We need to talk. Can I come over?
IDK. I’ve got police all over the f*ing house. This is crazy.
Can you come to me?
OK. When?
2.30pm
OK. OTW. CUL8R.
‘What does that mean? “CUL8R”?’ Torode asked.
‘See you later,’ Hawthorne said.
‘Well, it should be easy enough to find out who she was talking to.’
Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. There’s no name or phone number showing at the top of the screen. Whoever texted her could have been using a burner phone. Or there are plenty of websites he could have logged into to make himself anonymous – Bollywood Motion, SeaSms.com and so on. It depends how careful he was being.’
Hawthorne knew a lot about computers. He had mentioned he had someone who could help him in London and I had actually met him. He was a neighbour, a young man with muscular dystrophy, who sat in a room surrounded by industrial-sized computers and high-tech paraphernalia and helped Hawthorne hack into the police computer system whenever he needed information. Just for fun, he had even hacked into my phone.
‘How can you be so sure it’s a he?’ I asked.
‘There’s something about her texts that make me think they’re addressed to a man.’ Hawthorne was still holding the phone in his hand. ‘If it was a girlfriend, I think she’d be a bit more personal. Also, unlike her, he doesn’t use any abbreviations.’
‘Mrs le Mesurier knew who killed her husband,’ Torode said. ‘She was protecting him.’
‘She saw something out of her bedroom window last night,’ Hawthorne admitted. He was angry with himself. ‘I knew she was lying to me when I spoke to her this morning. She was too bloody insistent. Even if I had looked out of the window – and I didn’t – it would have been too dark … But in the next breath she was telling me that there were lights on in the Snuggery, which would have lit up anyone who approached. A double lie.’
‘Shame you didn’t tell me this sooner,’ Torode muttered.
‘Shame your people let her leave,’ Hawthorne replied.
He was still thumbing through the other messages on the phone. It’s interesting how we all carry around with us a complete record of our lives, where we’ve been, what we’ve been thinking at any given time. Writing the biography of people born in the twenty-first century will be incredibly easy because the researchers won’t have to do any work. It’ll all be there, spelled out in minute detail.
Helen le Mesurier had texted Nora Carlisle with shopping lists and cleaning instructions, but it was all quite brisk, with no sign of the fondness that the housekeeper had suggested. She had maintained a brisk, quite business-like relationship with her husband; none of the texts between them were more than half a dozen words. On the other hand, she had sent gushing messages to ‘JF’ in Paris and I was just glad that she hadn’t attached photographs. JF wasn’t alone. There was Martin, Bobby, Otto, Sergei … a long list of men with whom she had been entwined. Hawthorne had to scroll through a string of messages before he found the texts he was looking for. They were spread out over a week. They had been sent six months ago and whoever had received them had replied by phone, as if they didn’t want to commit themselves to anything in writing.
Hi, Colin. No regrets. You warm, funny, kind man. Talk soon. ILU.
Don’t blank me, C. What happened happened. Je ne regrette etc. Let’s talk soon.
Colin. Call me!!!
OMG, Colin. That’s not possible. OK. Will call again tonight. No more texts. Are you sure? What has he got?
Col, I need to see you! We can work this out. Where/when? LMK. Really worried now.
‘Any idea who Colin is?’ Torode asked.
‘Could be anyone,’ Hawthorne said.
It was Colin Matheson – who else could it be? I remembered the barrister in her bedroom only that morning, coming to her defence when Hawthorne had asked her about the power line. I had thought at the time that they were closer than they were pretending and Colin had been the first person Mrs Carlisle had called. But I had never thought they were as close as this. Standing there in the bedroom, I was careful not to say anything, but I was quite surprised that Hawthorne didn’t share Colin’s identity with Torode. I understood that he wanted to solve the case ahead of the police. That was the only way to be sure of getting paid. But wasn’t he actually obstructing their investigation, not giving them such vital information?
‘Well, we can give Colin a ring, I suppose,’ Torode said. ‘I see we’ve got his number at the top of the screen. Mind you, I doubt it’s relevant. This exchange happened a while ago
and there’s still every chance that Mrs le Mesurier will show up.’
‘Let me know if she does,’ Hawthorne said, grimly.
Torode took the phone back. ‘We’ll send you a transcript of whatever else we find on this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Whitlock to bring it over – if she bothers to show up again.’
‘Thank you.’
‘We’ve already made quite a bit of headway. Let’s hope you can get a result soon.’ He slipped the phone into his pocket. ‘What’s the food like at your hotel?’
‘It’s very good,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s terrible at our place. I had a shepherd’s pie just before I came out. Dry as a bone. No meat in it. None to speak of.’
Hawthorne nodded and the two of us left. He was deep in thought and didn’t say anything on the way back to the hotel and even Terry – who had been waiting outside – picked up on his mood and left him alone. He didn’t want dinner so I ordered room service on my own before falling into an uneasy sleep.
I couldn’t see the sea from my bedroom, but I could hear the waves breaking in the distance. They reminded me that I was on a tiny island – and so was the killer. We were both trapped.
16
The Search Party
The search for Helen le Mesurier began the next day.
The island of Alderney is tiny; it adds up to no more than three square miles. But it would be hard to imagine anywhere with more places to conceal a dead body. There were beaches and coves, rock faces, pools, caves and tunnels, dozens of fortifications, many of them abandoned and in ruins. If Helen had been killed, she could have been buried inland or weighed down and dumped at sea. There were dozens of isolated farms and houses where she could be held prisoner; dilapidated barns, hangars, warehouses, sheds. We’d managed to establish that Helen hadn’t left Alderney, at least not in her private jet or on a scheduled flight. But that might be bad news. Her text messages made it all too clear. It seemed that she had seen the killer and had arranged to meet him. If so, she had made a terrible mistake.
A Line to Kill Page 17