Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2)

by Jean Saunders

  But he wouldn’t, of course. A man in his position — professionally speaking — would have had no truck with such stuff. In his business he had to deal with scientific facts, not ethereal mumbo-jumbo. So it figured that he had met Moira first, and she had introduced him to her mother’s world.

  He may not even have been involved as a client at all. His name may simply have been included in Leanora’s notebook as one of their blackmailing successes. Or just a possible. God, what a fool she had been not to think of it before.

  She had never thought of Moira as a raving nympho, but with the video cassette still far too vivid in her mind, the word succubus came all too readily to her. She quickly pushed it out again and tried to think logically. And as laterally as Nick would. It also meant thinking backwards.

  Maybe her mother’s chance meeting with private eye Alex Best on a cruise ship had inspired Moira to think up this elaborate scheme to involve her. Moira had said she rarely came to London, but she had certainly seemed to know her way around. So maybe everything Moira had ever told her was a lie.

  She had wanted her lover caught and put away, since he had possibly begun threatening to expose their blackmailing scam, but she had been loath to actually name him.

  But once Alex had seen his face and knew his name, Moira must have known she would have to go to the police. So Moira had wanted him caught, but not through her own efforts. She had used Alex as the scapegoat. Maybe the dead flowers, and the anonymous phone calls said in that weird husky voice, had come from Moira too, and not Mister Big.

  Except for that last one on the answer machine, Alex reminded herself. Moira was dead, so that couldn’t have been her voice and Alex refused to give headroom to a disembodied voice coming through the ether. She wasn’t going down that road, thanks very much. But the only thing the Wolstenholmes couldn’t have foreseen was that he would turn out to be a murderer. So Leanora hadn’t been that clever a clairvoyant, Alex thought, with a ridiculous sense of satisfaction.

  When she thought about the lewd video again, Alex’s nickname for him had pathetic overtones in the circumstances, and anyway, she didn’t need his nickname now. She knew who he was. His hated, pompous face was often prominent in the newspapers — and she wished it was all she had seen.

  But there was no going back on it now. He would have to be exposed for the filth that he was. She winced at the word, but there was no other she could think of. Exposed he was, and exposed he would have to be, if only to show the world that even the most eminent and respectable of men could have a darker side to them.

  For a moment she imagined the newspaper headlines once the shit hit the fan. They would be huge. Everything would have to come out. Not just that he was a hit and run murderer in a backstreet London mews, but also the mastermind behind the murders of a Worthing woman and her daughter.

  And Alex would have to be involved, no matter how much she hated the thought of giving evidence. She always tried to steer clear of that kind of publicity. It didn’t help her profession for everyone to know who she was, even when it proved her astuteness. In this instance, she didn’t feel very bloody clever, just used.

  A line from a crime novel flashed into her mind. The private eye worked best who worked alone. She fervently agreed. Once everyone knew who she was, people might well be wary of hiring her services. It might work the other way, but she knew she would be more than willing for the police to have all the glory in this case.

  By now, Nick would know as much as she did, anyway. Well, nearly. He wouldn’t have seen the video evidence she had here. But his message implied that he had traced the owner of the black Jaguar. He may already have sent his people to the man’s palatial home by now, to arrest him on suspicion of murder. And the nightmare would be over.

  The sound of her buzzer made her jump. She mouthed into it, and the building superintendent droned from below.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor, Miss Best. Shall I send him up?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she almost gasped, risking a small smile at the super’s usual sense of reverence at her friendship with DCI Frobisher.

  Thank God he was here. She had never needed him more. And once she knew that they had nailed this bastard, she could get on with the rest of her life. It no longer seemed like a pretentious line. Just a relieved one.

  And the prospect of taking on future cases such as an everyday case of fraud, or tracking down a runaway teenager or two, seemed like childs’ play in more ways than one.

  She left her door on the latch, knowing that Nick would be up in the lift at any minute. She bent down to rewind the video cassette, meaning to hand it right over to him and never wanting to see it again. Porno movies? You could keep them!

  And if that was getting soft and squeamish, so be it. It was better than being so tough that she had nothing feminine left about her. That wasn’t part of the deal.

  ***

  ‘I told you to watch your back, Miss Best.’

  She heard the cultured voice at the same moment that she heard her door click shut. She turned quickly, but not quickly enough. The man was right behind her, crossing the room with amazing speed and agility for such a muscly, well-built man.

  And the only thing she could think about was thanking God that she didn’t still have the video running. But now that he knew he was virtually caught, he would probably have enjoyed seeing it. He would have felt proud of his prowess. He may have forced her to watch it with him, or even tried to make her re-enact what he had done with Moira... she almost retched at the thought of that ugly, rampant flesh…

  ‘What do you want? Who are you?’ she said in a cracked voice.

  He gave a throaty laugh that chilled her.

  ‘Oh, I think you know very well who I am, Miss Best. And what I want.’

  She prayed desperately that Nick would come soon, and took refuge in bravado.

  ‘I haven’t a clue what you want with me,’ she snapped.

  ‘Really. Then we’ll forget my female connections for the moment and weigh up the most recent evidence. You hired a car a few days ago. A green car. You drove it to Battery Mews.’

  Alex found it difficult to speak for a minute. Her pulse was beating wildly in her throat. Wildly and painfully.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have my own car,’ she croaked at last.

  ‘I know you have. So let’s just think why a private investigator would want to hire a car, shall we?’

  He was in prime prosecuting mode now. She realized that his flabby mouth was grinning, and he had clearly decided to play games with her. She thought of that mouth slavering over Moira, and shuddered the image away. Whatever Moira had done, she and her mother had done it for exploitation and money, while this man’s deeds were evil, and calculatingly murderous. But she had to forget her disgust and keep him talking as long as possible. Until Nick got here.

  ‘So you know I’m a private investigator, do you?’

  He gave an aggrieved sigh. ‘Don’t patronize me, Miss Best. In my profession it’s pathetically easy to find out such basic facts.’

  ‘Your profession!’ Alex almost spat out the words. ‘You should be ashamed to even say the word, after the way you’ve abused it. People trust you and you shit on them.’

  His eyes flashed dangerously, and she stepped back a pace until she was against the hard surface of the sideboard. To her horror she knocked the envelope with Moira’s handwriting on it to the floor, but he didn’t notice it. She could see the veins pumping in his neck, and wished desperately that he’d have a fatal heart attack and save everybody the trouble.

  ‘So just what did you see at Battery Mews, Miss Best?’

  ‘Nothing, because I wasn’t there. I don’t know where the hell it is. You’ve got the wrong person.’

  He gave another elaborate sigh. ‘I do hate it when people lie to me, and so many of them do. I see it all the time in my court, and my heart goes out to them, because I understand that no one wants to be there at all. But they ha
ve to be punished, of course. They have to serve their sentences, even if it means they never know freedom again.’

  ‘And you enjoy that, don’t you? You enjoy acting like God, and sentencing people to years and years of imprisonment, even if they don’t deserve it. You get off on it, I suppose?’

  She tried to keep up the air of bravado, but she was increasingly aware of how vulnerable she was, alone in her flat with a murderer. And where the hell was Nick?

  ‘Oh yes,’ her captor said dreamily. ‘I enjoy that. Though I do wish you young people would use the Queen’s English instead of these ridiculous expressions. I thought better of you, Miss Best. Get off on it, indeed, when what you really mean is—’

  ‘We both know what it means, Lord Ingleby,’ she snapped.

  God, he was sick. As she used his name for the first time, she saw his florid face darken even more, and who knew what was happening down below? She felt like vomiting at the thought, still with that damning video in her mind.

  She must have made an expression of disgust, because his face froze again. It was like a mask now, and something like a blowtorch of fear shot through Alex.

  ‘So what are we going to do about you, little lady?’ he said, his voice suddenly soft with menace.

  He moved slowly towards her, and to Alex’s dilated eyes, he seemed to fill the entire space in the room, and she shrank back even more. He was a murderer, and he wouldn’t hesitate to add her to his list of victims.

  ‘Look, Lord Ingleby—’

  ‘Yes, you know who I am,’ he snarled, his manner changing with the speed of light. ‘And much good it will do you, slut. You’re all the same—’

  ‘I’m not the only one who knows about you! The police are on to you, and they’ve got plenty of evidence about you and Harold Dawes, and about Moira and her mother and the way you manipulated people to do what you wanted, including that poor Trevor Unwin—’

  ‘Ah yes, Moira,’ he said, his ferrety eyes glittering, and ignoring all the rest. ‘It was a pity she had to go. She was very amenable to my needs. But then she and her mother became greedy, and I had my reputation to think about. They were threatening to ruin me, and I couldn’t allow that.’

  ‘So you killed her, just as you killed her mother.’

  ‘I didn’t kill either of them, Miss Best. You should get your facts correct before you risk a libel action.’

  ‘Really? And are you going to take me to court?’ Alex said, her lips chattering as she saw him take a thin cord out of his pocket and twist it in his hands almost lovingly.

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  She tensed herself as he came near, his arms raised in readiness for twining the cord around her neck. It was going to happen, and if Nick didn’t arrive soon, there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  But from somewhere in the depths of her terror Alex remembered her long-ago course of karate. She hadn’t used it for a very long time, and she knew she would be rusty now, but she was young and strong, and he was bulky and out of condition, as she well knew from his video.

  As he neared her, she jabbed two rigid fingers straight into his neck, and as he grunted she punched her other fist into his groin with all her strength and heard him howl with pain as he doubled up.

  She was still wearing her driving shoes, and she gave him a vicious kick on the shin. He didn’t seem to know which tender part of him to grab first.

  But he wasn’t done with her yet, and he crawled on all fours towards her, cornering her.

  ‘Bitch,’ he yelled, losing all semblance of lordly gentility. ‘You stinking, mother-fucking bitch! You’re like all the rest of them, only good for one thing. And I’ll have you yet, one way or another.’

  Alex doubted that he’d be able to do anything at all with his genitals after she had fisted him, but she realised he was stronger than she would have believed.

  And she was still alone with him, and he still had that cord dangling in his hand. Almost wetting herself with fear, in desperation she grabbed a heavy china vase from the sideboard and flung it at his head. It splintered at once, and a trail of blood trickled down his cheek.

  He shook his head, momentarily dazed, but nothing seemed to stop him. She heard her own sobs, deep inside her, and then she was screaming at him.

  ‘You’ll never get away with it, you bastard. Every newspaper in the country will hear about a high court judge who was nothing more than a filthy pervert—’

  Her legs seemed to have turned to water. It wasn’t just a fictional phrase then, she thought hysterically. It actually did feel like that. And then she felt swift humiliation as she knew what the hot wetness between her legs really was. He had reduced her to this, she sobbed, and she slid down against the wall as he crawled towards her.

  He had the twisted cord in his hands now, and she knew she would be unable to stop him. It was fade-out time... and the sobs became a thick whimpering in her throat, like that of a cornered animal.

  They both heard the violent kicks on her door at the same time, and then it burst open, and her entire glazed vision was suddenly filled with people in uniform, rushing inside the flat and hauling the bastard to his feet and away from her.

  Outside in the hallway, the building superintendant was goggle-eyed and scared. Neighbours were craning their necks to see what was going on, and being hustled away. And one man was striding towards her and holding her tight, as if he would never let her go…

  ‘Nick,’ she sobbed hysterically. ‘Oh God, Nick, I thought you were never going to get here — you don’t know — oh, you don’t know—’

  ‘Hush, sweetheart, it’s all over.’ His voice was harsh against her hair. ‘As soon as we traced the bastard’s car number from your photos, the rest of it followed. The Worthing police had done a good job, and forensics supplied the last bit of evidence to nail him. He’ll spend the rest of his natural behind bars.’

  ‘I’d do more than that to him,’ she sobbed. ‘I’d string him up by his—’

  ‘I’ll bet you would,’ Nick said, the smallest hint of a smile in his voice now. ‘That’s why I thank God you’re on my side, darling.’

  She said nothing for a moment. She was still held tightly in his arms, vaguely realizing that everyone else was leaving, and that her door was being dragged shut. Presumably there were other people to deal with matters from now on, while Nick had elected to stay behind and take her statement.

  It would have to be done, of course, she thought, trying desperately to pull herself back to reality and remember that she was still a professional with a job to conclude. And hoping that she never got another one like this one.

  ‘You’ll want to know about everything that’s been happening,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ve held out on you for too long, Nick, and I’m sorry about that, but my client—’

  ‘Your client was a high-class call girl, Alex,’ he told her calmly. She gasped, and jerked away from him to stare into his face. ‘Moira? You don’t mean Moira?’ she said stupidly, because of course he did, since she was her current client.

  ‘That’s how she got to know Lord Ingleby in the first place, and her sweet little old mother was a madam in more than one sense of the word. She took everybody in, and between them they had a high old blackmailing scam going. But they reached too far when they tried getting extortionate sums out of a high court judge. He had far too many contacts to be worried by them at first, and plenty of money to hire his minions to do his dirty work for him.’

  ‘Until he decided to run down Harold Dawes himself,’ she said, shivering at the memory.

  ‘Harold Dawes made the fatal mistake of letting Ingleby know of his drinking habits. He discovered that Dawes started bragging about all the money for drink that was available whenever he wanted it, and hinting at his sources. That was when Ingleby decided he had to go.’

  Alex shuddered. ‘I can hardly believe it. They all led double lives. If you had seen Leanora on the cruise, and the major too Harold Dawes. I mean. You’d never have
believed either of them could be so evil. Nor Moira. I trusted her completely, and I should have known better. You always warned me that people are not always what they seem, didn’t you?’ she said bitterly.

  ‘They rarely are, sweetheart.’

  ‘The one I really feel sorry for is Trevor Unwin.’

  ‘Good God, why feel sorry for that low-life? He stabbed your Madame L. to death, and a right hatchet job he made of it. It couldn’t have been pleasant.’

  ‘I doubt that any murder victim finds it pleasant! But if there’s any justification in it at all, I happen to know he did it for the sake of his mother, to give her some comfort in a genteel nursing home for the rest of her days.’

  As he looked at her sceptically, she risked a small smile, surprised to find that her lips could still move in an upward direction at all.

  ‘There’s a hell of a lot you don’t know, Nick, and it will be a huge relief now to tell you all of it. But I think it ought to wait a little while longer. I really need to take a shower and get into some different clothes.’

  ‘I think that would be a good idea. I wondered where the smell was coming from. It’s not your usual fragrance, darling.’ Oh God, he knew that too.

  But if she thought he was losing interest in her because she had done the unforgiveable and peed herself, she knew it didn’t matter a damn as his arms folded around her again, and his voice was rough with real affection as he spoke against her cheek.

  ‘Do you think any of it bothers me, Alex? Just to know you’re safe is all that matters. And rather than a shower, you’d do better to soak in a warm bath to get rid of tension. Stay right where you are and I’ll run it for you,’ he ordered.

  She did as she was told. She had no strength to do otherwise. But the sense of relief was so overwhelming that by the time she had stripped off her clothes and stepped into the warm bath Nick had filled for her, she washed quickly, and then she simply sat in the soapy water with her knees up to her chin and her arms wrapped tightly around them, and wept.