Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2)

by Jean Saunders

  ‘Stop it,’ she said out loud. ‘You’re the one going crazy now, and this is just some lunatic trying to scare you.’

  It had to be him, though. Mr X. And Alex had to prove that she was made of stronger stuff than he thought.

  The phone rang again, and she flinched, sure it would be him, checking that she had received his little gift. But contrary to what he might think, her fear was receding now, to be replaced with a cold anger. And even if she was still bloody scared, he was never going to know it.

  ‘Alexandra Best,’ she snapped into the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Best, and I do hope I’ve got the right person,’ said a male voice she had never heard before. It certainly wasn’t the muffled, sadistic voice of her earlier caller, and she tried to get her own voice in gear.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I can tell you that until I know what it’s all about. Who is this, please?’

  ‘You won’t know my name. It’s Graham Johnson, and Miss Wolstenholme gave me your number.’

  ‘Moira?’ Alex said.

  He did say MISS Wolstenholme? This wasn’t Leanora trying to make contact from the Great Beyond then?

  ‘I believe that’s her name. I called her just now, since some of our people want to visit her to pass on our condolences about her mother. Then it came up about Trevor, and I mentioned I might have a little problem of my own there, and she said I might care to get in touch with you.’

  For a moment the name Trevor meant nothing. And the conversation was so garbled she thought she must be dealing with another nutter. And then Alex remembered.

  ‘Do you mean Trevor Unwin? The man who stabbed Miss Wolstenholme’s mother?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Graham Johnson said.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry if I sounded disjointed just now. It’s all so confusing, you see, and so unexpected. It might mean nothing — I mean, it’s probably not a police matter — but you never know—’

  As he paused uncertainly, Alex spoke swiftly. ‘Mr Johnson, do you — did you know Trevor Unwin?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, as much as anybody did. He came to the home from time to time.’

  ‘What home is this, Mr Johnson?’ Alex said carefully.

  The phrase like watching paint dry, was filling her head, but she was already dragging a pad towards her and taking down everything the man said. It might mean something or nothing but you couldn’t afford to miss out on the slightest sliver of information. And her own curiosity about Trevor Unwin had already been aroused. The caller spoke more firmly, a hint of pomposity in his voice now.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m not making much sense, am I? I’m the manager of a rest home for the elderly, and Mrs Bessie Unwin has been with us for many years. Trevor is — was — her son.’

  ‘I see.’ Alex felt a small sense of triumph. She knew it. Even a loner wasn’t completely alone in the world.

  ‘I don’t really want to discuss it over the phone, Miss Best, but something — well — rather strange has happened. I’m afraid I never go to London. I’m so occupied here with my people, you see.

  ‘I understand, Mr Johnson, and it’s no problem. I’m happy to come to you. So where is this home, please?’

  ‘It’s the Happy Days Retirement Home in Beckingham, a small out-of-the-way village ten miles north of Worthing — it’s quite pretty and very rural, set in several acres—’

  She hauled him into the present as his voice wandered on to a mini sales spiel. She didn’t need to know that. First of all she needed to know about anyone who might remember a regular traveller…

  ‘So I presume that Trevor Unwin visited his mother there. How did he get there, Mr Johnson? Did he travel by bus or train, or drive a car?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. He used to ride his bicycle.’

  Alex thought rapidly. This was going nowhere fast, and as his voice stopped abruptly, she knew he was unprepared to go into any more detail over the phone.

  ‘Mr Johnson, I’ve only just got back to London, and I have to be at a meeting on Thursday, but I can be with you on Friday. I’d very much like to hear whatever it is you have to tell me, and to meet Mrs Unwin too.’

  ‘You won’t get much out of her, I’m afraid. She rarely speaks to anyone, and when she does, it’s mostly gibberish. Alzheimer’s, you know.’

  ‘But the other people in the home must have met her son, and spoken with him? And so did you, and your staff?’

  He sounded so unhappy, virtually apologizing for having contacted her at all, that she could have been tempted to give up there and then. But she knew she wouldn’t. Not with this slenderest of leads, even though she had no idea where it would take her. She hung up with the firm promise of meeting him on Friday afternoon. He sounded such a fusspot that what he had to say might not be of the slightest use, but trying to get some insight into Trevor Unwin’s character seemed a good place to start.

  The only place. she admitted, since so far her investigations had got nowhere. And she knew she was still confusing Leanora’s murder with the reason Moira had contacted her — to find out who the stalker was. But Alex just knew they had to be connected.

  Presumably the police were satisfied regarding their killer. They had got their man, and now he had topped himself, saving the tax-payer the expense of keeping him in custody for ever more. End of story.

  And she was getting as callous as Nick himself, she thought, appalled at herself. A man was dead, for God’s sake, and had been tormented enough to save up his painkillers and sleeping pills and do away with himself.

  She called the guest house in Worthing next, and booked in for the following weekend, with the possible option of a longer stay. Let Mrs Dooley think she was enchanted with her cooking or whatever. It was a useful base, and she clearly needed to see Moira again and compare notes.

  But her earlier lethargy had gone, and so had much of her jitters over the dead flowers. She had to forget it, and even if she didn’t know what it was all about yet, Graham Johnson had sounded mysterious and cagey. And he obviously hadn’t confided in Moira, except to make her curious too.

  She spent the rest of the evening decoding much of Leanora’s muddled information from her notebook and putting names and dates onto her laptop computer. At first sight it had seemed quite meticulous, but now Alex realized that it was anything but tidily done, as if Leanora had merely inserted information as and when it had occurred to her.

  Some of the names were somewhat familiar, but most of them were not, but once she had printed out her own list, it would give her the chance to go through the Who’s Who and other directories in her office, and see just what kind of influential people, and others, had consulted Leanora.

  She was still amazed that anyone had, but she was sure many of them had to be monied people. There had to be ‘a profitable way for the Wolstenholmes to live the way they had. Regarding the stalker and his threats, the word blackmail had loomed in her mind, but was still an avenue to be explored.

  There was always the thought. though, that if the two of them had worked out some elaborate blackmailing scam through Leanora’s gullible clientele, big money could be involved. And the more any blackmailing scam went on, with the perpetrators becoming ever more greedy, and demanding more and more payments for their silence, the more chancey it became for one or other of them to be silenced for good. Or both.

  ***

  Alex wasn’t looking forward to Thursday. Internal police hearings were always closed shop affairs, and they never welcomed outsiders, particularly of the female private eye variety.

  Ex-wives who might produce tears and tantrums were also a necessary evil, but the former Mrs Scott Nelson was a woman who said very little, and was older than Alex had expected. Though the kind of dance Scott might have put her through in the past had probably aged her considerably.

  Alex gave her own version of events coolly and concisely, in her expensive sloaney voice that gave authority to the words, while her brittle glare at some of the stat
ion constables dared them to read anything into the fact that she had been apparently ‘entertaining’ Scott Nelson at her flat on the evening before his death.

  ‘DI Nelson came to see me on a private matter. and only stayed a short while,’ she said crisply. ‘It was not a social call, and after he had told me what I wanted to know, he left. There was no indication that he was depressed enough to commit suicide. But since I am not qualified in that direction, that is all I am able to tell you.’

  ‘Were you and DI Nelson in the habit of meeting at your flat, Miss Best?’ she was asked next.

  ‘No, we were not. He was an acquaintance, no more.’

  ‘According to the medical evidence, DI Nelson had a number of scratches on his face, and considerable bruising to his genitals. Can you explain how this came about if your meeting was not on a social level?’

  Alex froze the questioner with a look. ‘It was definitely not social in the way you’re implying, sir. DI Nelson may have had certain expectations of the evening, but I certainly did not. There was an unfortunate scuffle, and I do admit to pushing him away in a way that left him in no doubt that I did not welcome his attentions.’

  She spoke stiffly, as if she was in the witness box, in terms that she was sure he would understand. She hated him. And she also hated the way the ex-wife stared at her so unblinkingly, as if she could read everything that she wasn’t saying. As if she could guess very well how her husband would have behaved, whether Alex had repulsed him or not.

  But she would surely know. She must have known what her husband was like... she had divorced him, for God’s sake. Alex gave her a sympathetic half-smile as the wife turned her head away when the inquiry finally dragged to an end.

  She prayed that she wasn’t going to be accosted by the wife later. Or was she a widow now? Was an ex-wife a widow? Or screamed at and pummelled and accused of being a whore. It happened. You never could tell with abused or rejected wives, and she must have suffered in the past. She must have loved her husband once, and maybe still did.

  That thought was confirmed when Nick told her over a desperately-needed cup of tea in the canteen that the wife had demanded to have Scott returned to her once the inquest was over and the body was finally released for burial.

  ‘Good God. I thought she’d have been glad to see the last of him, knowing about his abuse and his womanizing.’

  ‘It’s not unusual in these cases,’ he said, shrugging. ‘She’ll have the satisfaction of having the last say as far as he’s concerned. He’ll belong totally to her then, and nobody else can touch him.’

  Alex grimaced. ‘I think that’s gruesome.’

  ‘Forget it, Alex,’ he advised, seeing her pale face. ‘You weren’t that upset by it all, were you? Don’t tell me you fell for him after all,’ he added, unable to hide his resentment.

  ‘I didn’t. I just think what a lucky escape I had.’

  ‘Thank God for that. I wouldn’t want to see you wasting yourself on memories of that has-been,’ he said. ‘I’d rather your memories were of much sweeter times.’

  He squeezed her hand, his eyes flickering with a smile, and she knew he was thinking of that night in Worthing. She couldn’t smile back. She remembered it all too well — or most of it, anyway — but a repeat performance would complicate things, which was why she had no intention of telling him she was going back there tomorrow.

  ‘Not now, Nick, please,’ she muttered.

  ‘OK,’ he said, with one of his mercurial changes of mood. ‘Finish your tea and come into my office. I’ve got some information for you.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said, thankful that he apparently accepted her comment as reaction to the ordeal of the morning.

  ‘It’s about your Major Harry Deveraux.’

  Her attention was instantly caught. Where she had been pale before, she felt her face flood with warmth. She had almost forgotten about the major with her new interest in Trevor Unwin. But perhaps at last she was about to know that the major was all that he said — or not — and that would leave the prospect of his involvement with the Wolstenholme women wide open.

  ‘Lead on,’ she said quickly.

  Once in his office he closed the door so that they wouldn’t be overheard, and then produced a one-page print-out of information. Alex was disappointed, having hoped for a great wad of documents.

  ‘Is that it?’ she said.

  ‘Your man is either a bloody clever con artist or he has the luck of the devil. But two things I can tell you for certain. He was in the army, although he never rose above the rank of captain. And he never worked for Special Branch. Whatever ID he flashed about, it wasn’t genuine. My guess is he’s probably got a dozen of them, and passports too, to cover every eventuality. I’ve met the sort, and they get away with it far more often than you might think.’

  ‘I know that,’ Alex said. ‘But if that’s the case, then what was he doing at Leanora’s funeral, and why did he want to snoop around her premises afterwards? They never spoke to one another during the cruise as far as I could tell, and they must have seen one another. I know he saw her, because he commented on it to me.’

  It didn’t follow that Leanora would have noticed him, of course. Among five hundred or so passengers, you couldn’t see everyone. But the major and Leanora had been on the same dinner sitting, like herself, and he had probably been observing her all that time. He’d also been chatting up the wealthier women, she remembered, and had made a point of chatting to her.

  Had he known, even then, who she was, and what she did? The thought suddenly chilled her. He may not have been a genuine Special Branch investigator, but he knew his way around all right.

  ‘I compared a couple of those holiday snaps you loaned me with our mugshots,’ Nick went on.

  ‘I never loaned you any holiday snaps!’ she said at once.

  Nick spoke coolly, unfazed as usual. ‘Sorry darling, slip of the tongue. I borrowed them from your room at Worthing. Thought it might be useful.’

  ‘You’ve got a hell of a nerve—’

  ‘Do you want my help or not?’ he asked, silencing her. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t turn up anywhere on our files, unless he’s also a master of disguises. Are you sure you’re not making too much of this guy, Alex?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she said, resentful of the way he was quizzing her now. ‘What would you think, when he somehow got hold of a key to Leanora’s premises that her daughter didn’t know about, and gave false credentials to me and the young copper who questioned us? I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  ‘So is there anything else you want to tell me?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like why you’re so bloody jittery over him. Has he threatened you in any way? Or contacted you since?’

  She tried not to flinch, but he was looking at her steadily, and she couldn’t stop the pulse beating at the side of her neck. He’d know she was damn scared of something, but he knew nothing about any stalker who might not be terrorizing Moira, but was putting the fear of God in her!

  She was tempted to tell him everything, but if she did it would no longer be her case.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘and if I’m jittery, it’s because I don’t like being pulled in here and made to feel like a slut with your bloody constables sniggering behind their helmets and getting a hard-on at the thought of my fisting Scott Nelson in the balls. Is that enough to be going on with?’

  He leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, and grinned at her.

  ‘I love it when you talk dirty in that posh voice—’

  ‘And that line has got whiskers on. So can I go now?’

  ‘Nobody’s keeping you, darling. How about dinner later? You look like you need cheering up. Italian or Chinese?’

  She felt like telling him to stop patronising her as the little woman, and just what he could do with his Italian or Chinese. Instead she heard herself agreeing. Why not? If she treated it as a good exercise in keeping her mouth shut and veering away from any subj
ect he didn’t have to know, then she might as well let him pay for the privilege. But she added the proviso that they kept strictly away from anything to do with police work or PI work, just to put it on record.

  Once he had agreed, she stepped outside the police station, breathing in the London traffic fumes as if they were nectar, and walked forcefully towards her car, aware that several pairs of eyes in the uniformed section were probably watching her progress from the top floor windows and making lewd comments. If it wasn’t so bloody undignified, she’d turn and give them a two-finger salute, she thought, or even a one-finger one…

  ‘Can I speak to you for a minute?’ she heard a voice say as she thankfully turned the corner into the road where she had parked her car.

  ‘Oh — yes, of course — Mrs Nelson,’ she said, caught off guard by the woman’s unexpected appearance.

  Was this it then? You never knew about rejected wives. Was she going to produce a knife and get her own revenge on the woman she assumed was her husband’s latest paramour, or simply hurl insults at her for all the world to hear?

  ‘I wanted to say I’m sorry,’ the woman went on humbly.

  ‘Sorry?’ Alex said.

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry if Scott offended you in any way. He couldn’t help himself, you see. I know you must think this is very odd, but I’d really like to know how he was on that last evening. Although we had been divorced for a couple of years, I still worried about him.’

  ‘Did you?’ Alex said, starting to feel like an echo.

  Mrs Nelson gave a half-smile. ‘You’re surprised, Miss Best. But I was a lot older than Scott, and I knew what he was like when I married him, and it didn’t matter. He wanted a mother-figure, and I — well, I suppose I wanted someone to look after. We suited one another, and I knew all about his little indiscretions. And despite all they said about him, he never hit me, you know. I was his mummy.’

  Alex felt herself mentally backing away. She heard plenty of bizarre things from clients, many of them unsavoury and some of them downright sick, but she didn’t like the way this conversation was going.