by Jane Renshaw
She couldn’t do that any more. And she had to keep wetting it to stop bits of it sticking out.
She’d say, ‘I told her I only wanted a trim, but look. Isn’t it horrible?’ And Moir would say something like, ‘On you, nothing could be horrible,’ but his eyes would linger on the fringe. He probably thought he was being tactful and subtle, but when he didn’t like something about her – her shoes or her skirt or her coat or her make-up – he had a way of looking a little too long.
Well, it would grow out, and then she could go back to the West End salon and get it cut properly.
She reapplied her lipstick and dusted her face with powder where it had gone shiny.
As she made her way to the taxi rank, she stroked her thumb across the inside of her ring finger, and the circle of metal around it that was Moir saying I want to spend my life with you.
She’d been walking around in the cocoon of that thought all the time she’d been away. It really was as if Moir’s love was a cocoon; invisible protection from anything anyone could throw at her. There was enough of the old Helen left that she knew she should be worrying, about what she was going to do about getting a job, about whether she’d become a pathetic parasite, letting Moir take over like he had, arrange the sale of her flat, pay for everything, even the solicitor’s fees for the conveyancing –
But the new Helen didn’t care.
She hadn’t felt like this since she was a teenager. But how could she ever have thought she was in love with Hector Forbes? She hadn’t even known him, not really. And how sad had she been, cyberstalking him all these years later?
When she got back she’d burn that scrapbook.
As she waited for a taxi she checked her phone. There were two text messages. One from Mum, asking how the journey had been, and one from Moir:
Should be finished here soonish – see u at home about 6. Have teacakes! xxxxMxxxx
Teacakes. Looking at the words on the screen, standing there in the queue, she laughed out loud. Teacakes. And they’d be her favourites, from the baker on West Maitland Street.
She composed a quick reply:
Mmmmmmmm can’t wait! xxxxHxxxx
‘Thirty-one Eglinton Crescent, please,’ she told the taxi driver, pulling her suitcase in after her, not quite able to repress the little feeling of satisfaction that came with giving that address.
Sitting back on the wide seat, she composed a reply to Mum’s text.
Hi Mum. Back safe and sound but exhausted! Thanx for lovely time. Will phone later. Love to Lionel. Helenxx
It was the rush hour. As they joined the back of a stationary queue of traffic on Queen Street, the driver said, ‘It’s not even the Festival yet,’ and Helen said, ‘Oh God, don’t remind me,’ and in the rearview mirror they exchanged a smile, one Edinburgh person to another.
He stopped at the door and got out to help Helen with her case. ‘Nice part of town.’
She gave him £20 and told him to keep the change because he’d be expecting a reasonable tip, wouldn’t he, from someone who lived in Eglinton Crescent?
‘Thanks very much,’ he said. ‘Like a hand up the steps with that?’
‘That’d be great. If you could leave it in the hall, my boyfriend will carry it up to the flat later.’
She opened the main door with her key and the driver put the case down on the Victorian tiles.
‘Thank you.’
She shut the door behind him and just stood for a second, breathing in the cool air with its familiar smells. There was an arrangement of chrysanthemums and roses on the big mahogany sideboard.
Home.
The final contracts on the sale of her flat had been exchanged just before she left, so this really was home now. She climbed the stairs to the first floor landing, unlocked the mortise and then the Yale, and pushed open the door. There was another arrangement of chrysanthemums and roses on the hall table. Moir must have bought them specially. He wasn’t a flower person, he wouldn’t know a daisy from a dahlia, but he knew she loved them so he bought them for her all the time. He tended to go for red roses and bright, artificial-looking arrangements, and she hadn’t the heart to tell him she preferred things with scent, things that looked more natural – but these roses were lovely. An old variety of some kind, the petals very pale peach and crumpled together.
She bent to sniff one.
And noticed the surface of the table. Wood, not marble.
It was a different table. Victorian, mahogany, with two drawers and legs that ended in claws. Nice, but she’d liked the other one better. She’d loved the fossils in the marble.
And there was a rug on the floor. Red, with blue dots.
Moir had been splashing out.
Well, it was his flat, wasn’t it? Stupid to feel – left out?
Probably it was meant to be a big surprise. A make-over for the flat. Maybe there hadn’t been hassles at work after all. Maybe he was in here waiting for her, waiting to jump out and say, ‘Whaddya think then?’
She’d have to be convincingly enthusiastic.
But oh God, what was that on the wall? A huge painting of – what?
A woman’s face, fractured and distorted and merged with a watermelon. Or was it a cabbage?
She opened the door to the sitting room.
Oh God.
There was a big orange sofa in place of their old ones. With chrome arms. And a new plasma screen. Moir’s old TV had been big – too big – but this was a monster, completely dwarfing the fireplace.
On the mantel was a row of photographs. A wedding photo with people in it she didn’t know, a big close-up of the bride and groom. And a kid in school uniform.
Everything in the room was different. All their old stuff had gone – their sofas, her pouffe, her desk and computer, the sideboard. The horses painting. And in their place – the orange sofa, two ugly leather chairs, a nest of tables with a pink lamp on top.
And who the hell were the people in the photographs?
Was she in the wrong flat? She couldn’t be. She’d opened the door with her keys.
She could hear something.
She went back into the hall and listened. It was a chopping sound, coming from the kitchen.
She pushed open the saloon-style doors.
31
A sturdy woman in a yellow sweater was standing at the worktop, cutting something on a board. As Helen walked in she yelped and dropped the knife.
‘What –? What do you think you’re doing? How did you get in here?’
‘I have keys,’ Helen said, stupidly.
Could this be Rebecca? No. She didn’t look anything like the pictures Moir had shown her.
A cold weight was settling in her stomach.
‘If you want to enter the property you have to give us notice,’ the woman was saying. ‘That’s in the agreement. You can’t just let yourself in.’
‘What?’
‘The tenancy agreement? You’re from Dunedin Properties?’
‘No. I live here. With my boyfriend. My fiancé. Moir Sandison.’
The woman opened her eyes wide and pushed away the board. There were two whole potatoes on it and some cut-up chunks. ‘Well not any more you don’t. Moir Sandison doesn’t live here any more.’
‘Of course he does!’
‘Dunedin are very interested in getting hold of your Moir. He owes them three months’ rent, apparently, and a flat’s worth of furniture.’
‘Well that’s not right. Moir’s not renting the flat. He owns it.’
‘That’s what he told you, is it? Look, come and sit down.’
Helen stayed where she was. ‘He just sent me a text message – just now – he said he’d meet me here.’ She rummaged in her bag, hands shaking; found the phone and called up the text message: see u at home about 6. She pressed Call and put the phone to her ear.
The woman was looking at her.
She turned away.
Where the microwave used to be there was a row of cookery books. An
d there was a clock with poppies on it by the window, where their cork board had hung. Where Moir would leave funny drawings for her to find, and notes with his terrible spelling.
A buzzing in her ear, and then nothing. Dead air.
‘I’m calling the police.’ And before the woman could say anything Helen had pushed through the doors back into the hall. She wanted to just get out, to get out of the flat, but maybe if she did that the woman wouldn’t let her back in again. Maybe the police wouldn’t be able to get in either, without a warrant.
She stood in the middle of the hall and tapped 999.
32
She didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. But surely this wasn’t right?
‘Isn’t one of you going to stay?’ She stood in the doorway so the woman in the yellow sweater – Kelly Reid, she’d claimed her name was – couldn’t close the door on them.
The policewoman, who was already following her male colleague across the landing to the stairs, turned back to look at her but said nothing.
‘Aren’t you going to even search the flat?’
‘For what?’ The policewoman’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had fiercely plucked eyebrows and wore harsh red lipstick which made her look older than she probably was.
‘For anything that could tell you what’s going on. What’s happened to Moir.’
Behind her, Kelly Reid said: ‘You don’t need to be Hercule Poirot to work that one out.’
The male officer hadn’t even stopped. Now he was on the stairs.
‘But he’s disappeared.’
The policewoman walked back across the lobby and flicked a smile at Kelly Reid before saying to Helen, as if to an idiot: ‘Yes. With the contents of the flat and three months owing on the rent.’
‘How do you know these Dunedin Properties people are telling the truth? How do you know she is?’
‘If there was some big conspiracy going on here, involving Dunedin Properties forcing your boyfriend to sign over ownership of the flat to them, do you really think they’d have reported his theft of the contents, and non-payment of rent, to us?’
Could it be true?
Could Moir have done all that?
She ran her thumb over the circle of hard metal around her finger.
No.
‘Look, I don’t know what’s happened, but –’
‘You think the conspiracy extends to the Land Register? Because Dunedin Properties are listed there as the owners of the property.’ She shook her head. ‘We’ll do what we can to locate him. What you need to do now is come to the station and make a statement, and we can take it from there. Okay? You’ve just had a bad shock. Is there anyone you’d like to call?’
◆◆◆
The room was in some respects like the ones you saw on TV: bare white walls, no windows, a squeaky vinyl floor; a table and some chairs in the middle. But there was also a line of tables with boxfiles and folders and computers along one wall. And she’d expected there’d be two of them, and a recorder of some sort, but there was just this one man, DC Powell, who wrote down everything she said in a notebook, as the policeman in her flat had done. Like what she was saying wasn’t important enough to record.
Because she had to keep stopping to let him write down what she’d said, she kept forgetting where she’d got to, and he had to go back over what he’d written to remind her.
It was getting hard to think. A pulse of pain had started in her forehead and she wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to lie down on the floor and close her eyes and sleep. But she had to focus. She had to make this man understand that something had happened to Moir.
‘Did you have a joint account?’ He had very thick eyebrows. They made him look angry.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you checked the balance recently? Since you went away?’
‘No.’
‘I suggest you do so now. Do you have online banking?’
‘Yes.’
He indicated the line of tables behind him. ‘We’ve got internet access here.’ And he got up from the table and switched on one of the computers. He pulled round a chair and placed it in front of the screen.
As Helen sat down in the chair he walked away across the room, looking down at his notebook. She logged into the bank’s website and the account details popped up on the screen.
The number at the top of the right-hand column was £1100. With the letters ‘OD’ after it: overdrawn.
Her eyes jumped down the numbers in the balance column. On 5 July the balance had been £21 478.54. On 6 July, just before she had left for Yorkshire, the money from the sale of her flat had come through, bringing the total to £203 324.87. But yesterday the account had plummeted to £1100 OD.
‘Someone’s taken the money from the account. All of it. It’s all gone.’
‘Mind if I take a look?’
She pushed back the chair and stood.
He sat down in her place, swivelling to face the screen. ‘I’m guessing £1100 is your overdraft limit?’
Helen nodded, staring at the dates and numbers. The money had been taken as a cash withdrawal.
‘But – they let people withdraw that kind of money in cash?’
‘As long as you give two days’ notice and provide primary and secondary forms of identification, yes.’
‘It couldn’t have been Moir. Or if it was, someone must have been making him do it.’
‘The bank’s CCTV will show us who it was.’
Her head was pounding. Her whole body felt odd – weak, like she hadn’t eaten for days and days. Her legs were wobbling and she needed to sit down now.
The nearest chair was the one DC Powell had been sitting on at the table. It was still warm from his bum. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She wanted Moir. She wanted him to be here, putting his arm round her and saying, ‘Now what’s all this,’ in that very male, slightly patronising way he had – and how daft was that, because if he was here to help she wouldn’t need his help, would she?
‘There was this reconstruction once, on Crimewatch,’ she said, ‘where the criminals broke into a house in the middle of the night, and tied the people up, and made them give them the keys to a warehouse. Some gang might be keeping him locked up somewhere, making him give them money –’ Oh God, please let him be safe. ‘Or someone might be blackmailing him.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t know.’
DC Powell swivelled in the chair to look at her. ‘Did Moir ever mention that he’d been involved in any illegal activities? In fraud?’
‘No. Why are you asking that? Are you saying – that he has been?’
‘No. As far as we can ascertain, he’s got no criminal record. Do I have your permission to print off this online statement? And to contact the bank regarding this activity on the account?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘I’ll just ask you to sign a form to that effect...’ And as he opened one of the box files: ‘So the money from the sale of your flat went into this account on 6th July.’
‘Yes. Just before I went on holiday.’
‘Was it you or Moir who suggested a joint account?’
‘Moir. But it wasn’t like you’re thinking. It was so I could get at his money. I’d resigned from my job, I’d no income – so he started paying his salary into the joint account, and told me I mustn’t be silly about it, I must take out as much as I wanted.’
‘When did you open the account?’
‘I can’t remember. Why is that relevant?’ This was just wasting time. ‘The idea that Moir would take the money for himself – it’s ridiculous. Apart from the fact that I know he would never do that, he earns three times as much as I did. And money, material things – they’re just not important to him. He hates shopping. He hates all those property shows. What he calls “conspicuous consumption”. He’s in trouble, someone else is doing this and he’s in trouble. You need to find him.’
Her bag with her tissues was on
the floor on the other side of the table.
She went carefully round to the other chair, and sat down on it, and lifted her bag onto her knee.
‘You’ve had one hell of a shock.’
She found the little pack of tissues and pulled one out. ‘He’s my fiancé.’
‘Whatever the truth of the matter, the activity on your account is an important lead for us.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ On the table top there were three little depressions in a row; as if they’d been made by one interviewee after another nervously drumming their fingers on the table. ‘You want to know – I’m sorry, what was it you wanted to know?’
‘When did you open the account?’
‘It was after I resigned from my job. About three weeks ago.’
‘Okay. Here’s the form. I’ve put in the account details – if you could check them, and then sign and date it...’
While she did so, he said:
‘Did he pressure you to have the money from your flat sale released to the joint account rather than your personal one?’
‘No. We just decided it would be easier, because Moir was the one dealing with it, the sale of the flat, and as I was going away – in case there were any problems, it made sense to use the joint account. I can’t remember which of us suggested it. It might have been me. The plan was that when I came back we’d decide what to do with the money: whether to invest it, or sell Moir’s flat too and buy a bigger place.’
‘Only the flat wasn’t Moir’s to sell.’
She pushed the form back across the table. ‘No.’
That horrible policewoman had been right. It was the first thing Helen had asked DC Powell when he’d brought her in here – did they have proof that Moir didn’t own the flat? – and he’d shown her the Land Registry details in black and white. 1F1, 31 Eglinton Crescent had belonged to Dunedin Properties since 2002.
He opened a folder, flicked through the papers inside it, removed two sheets and pushed them across the table. ‘That’s the tenancy agreement he signed with Dunedin Properties. And the application form he filled in initially. In the space for references, you see he’s put the name “Ewan Mathers” and the address 16 Fountain Place, Dunfermline, and a landline number. And he’s described this referee as his previous employer. Does the name mean anything to you?’