“And if I refuse?”
“I will arrest you.”
“For what, exactly?”
“Your suspected involvement in the murder of Byrne Tyler.”
Richard stared at her in astonishment, then managed to gather some dignity. “I hate to ask you this in such a public arena.” He indicated the camera crew. “But are you quite sure you have the right house?”
“Oh yes, sir. I have the right house. It’s yours.”
“Very well. May I at least get dressed first?”
“Yes, sir. One of my male colleagues will accompany you.”
He gave a grunt of surprise as he realized just how serious she was. “I think I’d like my one phone call now as well.”
“That’s America’s Miranda rights, sir. But you’re certainly free to call a solicitor if you think you require one.”
“I don’t require one to establish my innocence,” Richard snapped. “I simply wish to sue you into your grave. You have no idea how much trouble this mistake will bring down on your head.”
Richard suspected the layout of the interview room at Oakham police station was deliberately designed to depress its occupants. Straight psychological assault on the subconscious. Drab light-brown walls shimmered harshly under the glare from the two biolum panels in the ceiling. The gray-steel desk in front of him vibrated softly, a cranky harmonic instigated by the buzzing air-conditioning grille.
He’d been in there for twenty minutes alone, dourly contemplating this ludicrous situation, before the door opened and Jodie Dobson came in.
“About time,” he barked at her. “Can I go now?”
She gave him a sober look. “No, Richard. This isn’t some case of mistaken identity. I’ve been talking to Detective Patterson, and they really do think you had something to do with Byrne Tyler’s murder.”
“That’s insane! I’ve never even met him.”
“I know, and I’m sure we can clear it up with a simple interview.”
“I want that Patterson cow sued for doing this to me. They tipped off the news team. I’ll have my face plastered all over the media. Do you know what kind of damage that’ll do to me? Business is about trust, credibility. I can’t believe this! She’s ruined five years’ hard work in five minutes. It was deliberate and malicious.”
“It’s not that bad. Listen, the quicker you’re out and cleared, the quicker we can instigate damage limitation.”
“I want her to make a public apology, starting with that news crew that was outside my bloody house.”
“We can probably get that. But you’ll need to cooperate. Fully.”
“Fine, bring them on!” He caught the tone in her voice. “What do you mean?”
“They’ve brought in some kind of specialist they want to sit in on your interview. Greg Mandel, he’s a gland psychic.”
Richard hoped his flinch wasn’t too visible. There were stories about gland psychics. Nothing a rational adult need concern themselves about, of course. Human psi ability was a strictly scientific field these days, quantified and researched. A bioware endocrine gland implanted in the brain released specific neurohormones to stimulate the ability. But…“Why do they want him to interview me?”
“Help interview you,” Jodie stressed. “Apparently his speciality is sensing emotional states. In other words he’ll know if you’re lying.”
“So if I just say that I didn’t kill this Byrne Tyler, Mandel will know I’m being truthful?”
“That’s the way it works.”
“Okay. But I still want Patterson nailed afterward.”
Richard gave Mandel a close look when he entered the interview room. Approaching middle age, but obviously in shape. The man’s movements were very…precise, moving the chair just so to sit on rather than casually pulling it out from the desk as most people would. Richard supposed it was like a measure of confidence and Mandel seemed very self-assured. It was an attitude very similar to Alan O’Hagen’s.
Amanda Patterson seated herself beside Mandel, and slotted a couple of matte-black memox crystals into the twin AV recording deck.
“Interview with Richard Townsend,” Patterson said briskly. “Conducted by myself, Detective Patterson, with the assistance of CID advisory specialist Greg Mandel. Mr. Townsend has elected to have his solicitor present.”
“I did not kill Byrne Tyler,” Richard said. He stared at Mandel. “Is that true?”
“In as far as it goes,” Mandel said.
“Thank you!” he sat back and fixed Patterson with a belligerent expression.
“However, I think we need to examine the subject in a little more detail before giving you a completely clean slate,” Mandel said.
“If you must.”
Mandel gave Patterson a small nod. She opened her cybofax and studied the display screen. “Are you are a partner in the Firedrake company, Mr. Townsend?” she asked.
“What?”
“A company called Firedrake, do you own half of the shares?”
“Well, yes. One share, fifty percent. But that’s nothing to do with Byrne Tyler. It’s a venture with a…a business colleague.”
“Who is that?” Mandel asked.
“Not that it’s anything to do with you or this murder enquiry, but his name is Alan O’Hagen.”
“Interesting,” Detective Patterson said. “The other listed shareholder in Firedrake is Newton Holdings.”
“Well, yes, that’s O’Hagen’s company.”
“No, Mr. Townsend. According to the companies register, Newton Holdings is owned by Byrne Tyler.”
Richard gave Jodie a desperate look. She frowned.
Detective Patterson consulted her cybofax again. “You’ve been partners for two years, is that right?”
“I…I’ve been a partner with Mr. O’Hagen for two years, yes.” He couldn’t help the way his eyes glanced at Mandel. The psychic was watching him impassively. “Not Byrne Tyler. I’ve never met him. Never.”
“Really?” Patterson’s tone was highly skeptical. “Have you ever visited the Sotheby’s office in Stamford?”
Richard hooked a finger around his shirt collar; the air-conditioning wasn’t making any impression on the heat suddenly evaporating off his skin. O’Hagen! O’Hagen had scammed him. But how? He wasn’t a fool, he hadn’t paid O’Hagen any money, quite the opposite. The painting…Which the police obviously knew about. “Yes, I’ve been there.”
“Recently?”
“Earlier this week actually. I think you know that, though, don’t you? I was having an item of mine valued for insurance purposes.”
“Was that item a painting?” Mandel asked.
“Yes.”
“And didn’t you also confirm its authenticity while you were there?”
“I suppose so, the assistant had to make sure it was genuine before she valued it. That’s standard.”
“And the painting definitely belongs to you?”
“It does.”
Mandel turned to Patterson. “Well, that’s true.”
“Of course it is, I was given it some time ago by Mr. O’Hagen,” Richard said. “It was a gift. He will confirm that.”
“I shall be very interested in talking to this Mr. O’Hagen,” Patterson said. “That’s if you can ever produce him for us.” She turned her cybofax around so Richard could see the screen, it held the image of View of a Hill and Clouds. “Is this the painting, Mr. Townsend?”
“Yes it is.”
“For the record, View of a Hill and Clouds by Sean McCarthy belongs to Byrne Tyler. The artist was a friend of the deceased. It was stolen from his apartment, presumably at the same time that he was murdered.”
“No,” Richard hissed. “Look, okay, listen. I’d never even heard of Firedrake until this week. Taking me on as a partner was a way of proving its viability to the banks. O’Hagen wanted a loan from them, that was the only way he could get it. We fixed it to look like I’d been a partner for two years.”
“Richard,” Jodie wa
rned.
“I’m being set up,” he yelled at her. “Can’t you see?”
“Set up for what?” Patterson asked; she sounded intrigued.
“Byrne Tyler’s murder—that’s what I’m in here for, isn’t it? For Christ’s sake. O’Hagen’s rigged this so it looks like I was involved.”
“Why would Mr. O’Hagen want to do that to you?”
“I don’t fucking know. I’ve never met him before.”
“Mr. Townsend.”
Mandel’s voice made Richard lurch upright. “Yes?”
“You’ve never killed anyone yourself, but did you ever pay a man to eliminate somebody for you?”
Richard gaped at the psychic. In his head a panicked voice was yelling oh shit oh shit oh shit. Mandel would be able to hear it, to taste the wretched knowledge. His own shock-induced paralysis was twisting the emotion to an excruciating level. He thought his head was going to burst open from the stress.
Mandel gave him a sad, knowing smile and said: “Guilty.”
Two - A Suspicious Fall
Detective Amanda Patterson had never visited Bisbrooke before. It was a tiny village tucked away along the side of a deep valley just outside Uppingham. Unremarkable and uneventful even by Rutland’s standards, which made it a contender for dullest place in Europe. Until today, that is, when one of the uniforms had responded to a semi-hysterical call from a cleaning agency operative, and confirmed the existence of a body with associated suspicious circumstances.
The unseasonal rain beat down heavily as she drove over from Oakham, turning the road into a dangerous skid-rink. Then she had almost missed the turning off the A47. As it happened, that was the least of her navigational worries.
“Call him again,” she told Alison Weston. The probationary detective was sitting in the passenger seat beside her, squinting through the fogged-up wind screen trying to locate some landmark.
“No way. Uniform will crap themselves laughing at us if I ask for directions,” Alison complained. “It’s got to be here somewhere. There can’t be more than five buildings in the whole godforsaken village.”
Amanda let it go. Hailstones were falling with the rain now, their impacts making clacking sounds on the car’s bodywork. She braked at yet another T-junction.
Bisbrooke was woven together by a lace work of roads barely wide enough for a single vehicle. They all curved sharply, making her nervous about oncoming cars, and they were all sunk into earthen gullies topped with hedges of thick bamboo that had been planted to replace the long-dead privet and hawthorn of the previous century. With the rain and hail pummeling the wind screen, it was perilously close to driving blind. The only clue they were even in the village was the occasional glimpse of ancient stone cottages and brick bungalows huddled at the end of gravelled drives.
“You must be able to see the church,” she said. The address they had been given was in Church Lane.
Alison scanned the swaying tops of the bamboo shoots. “No.” She gave her cybofax an instruction, and it produced a satnav map with their location given as a small pink dot. “Okay, try that one, down there on the left.”
Amanda edged the car cautiously along the short stretch of road where Alison was pointing. The tarmac was reduced to a pair of tire tracks separated by a rich swathe of emerald moss.
“Finally!” The junction ahead had a small street sign for Church Lane; a white-painted iron rectangle almost overgrown by a flamboyant purple clematis. This road was even narrower. It led them past the village church, a squat building made from rust-colored stone that had long since been converted into accommodation units for refugee families.
The lane ran on past a big old farmhouse, and ended at a new building perched on the end of the village. Church Vista Apartments. Its design was pure Californian-Italian, completely out of place in the heart of rural England. Five luxury apartments sharing a single long building with a stable block and multi-port garage forming a courtyard at the rear. Climbing roses planted along the walls hadn’t grown halfway up their trellises yet.
There was a tall security gate in the courtyard wall. Amanda held her police identity card up to the key, and it swung open for her. A police car and the cleaning agency van were parked on the cobbles beyond. Amanda drew up next to them. The rain was easing off.
They moved briskly over the cobbles to the door of apartment three. One of the uniforms was standing just inside, holding the heavy glass-and-wood door open. She didn’t have to flash her card at him, as Rutland’s police force was small enough for them all to know each other.
“Morning, Rex,” she said as she hurried into the small hallway. He nodded politely as she shook the water from her jacket. “What have we got?”
“Definitely a corpse.”
Alison slipped in and immediately blew her cheeks out. Her breath materialized in the air in front of her. “God, it’s bloody freezing in here.”
“Air-conditioning’s on full,” Rex said. “I left it that way, I’m afraid. Scene-of-crime, and all that.”
“Good,” Amanda muttered, not meaning it. The chill air was blowing over her wet clothes, giving her goosebumps.
Rex led them into the apartment. It was open-plan downstairs, a single space with white walls and terra-cotta tile flooring, Mexican blackwood cabinets and shelving were lined up around the edges. There were pictures hanging on every wall; prints, chalk and charcoal sketches, oils, watercolors, silver-patina photographs. Most of them featured young female nudes. Three big plump cream-colored leather settees formed a conversation area in the middle, surrounding a Persian rug. A woman in the cleaning agency’s mauve tunic sat on one of the settees, looking shaken.
The front of the room was twice the height of the back. Wide wrought-iron stairs curved up to a balcony which ran the entire width, giving access to all the upstairs rooms. A sheer window wall in front of the balcony flooded the whole area with light.
The corpse lay at the foot of the stairs. A man in his mid-to-late twenties, wearing a pale gray dressing gown, his legs akimbo on the tiles, head twisted at a nasty angle. Some blood had dribbed from his nose. It was dry and flaking now.
There were three air-conditioning grilles set in the edge of the balcony. One of them was right above the corpse, blowing a stream of the frosty air directly over him.
“He fell down the stairs?” Alison asked.
“Looks like it,” Rex said.
“So was it a fall, or a push?” Amanda wondered out loud.
“I had a quick look around upstairs,” Rex said. “No sign of any struggle. The main bed’s been used, but everything seems to be in place as far as I can tell.”
Amanda wrinkled her nose up. There was a faint smell in the air, unpleasant and familiar. “How long’s he been here?”
“Possibly a day,” Rex said.
Alison gestured at the window wall. “And nobody saw him?”
“One-way glass,” Amanda said. It had that slight give away gray tint. She stared through it, understanding why the apartments had been built here. The last of the rain clouds had drifted away, allowing the hot sun to shine down. It was a magnificent view out over the junction of two broad rolling grassland valleys. In the distance she could see an antique windmill, its wooden sail painted white. A long communal garden stretched out ahead of her, a paddock beyond that. There was a circular swimming pool twenty meters away, surrounded by a flagstone patio. Wooden-slat sun loungers were clustered around stripy parasols.
“All right,” she said wearily. “Let’s do the preliminary assessment.”
Alison opened her cybofax. “When was the body discovered?”
“Approximately 8:45 this morning,” Rex nodded toward the cleaning woman. “Helen?”
“That’s right,” the woman stammered. “I saw him—Mr. Tyler—as soon as I came in. I called the police right away.”
Amanda pursed her lips and knelt down beside the body. The handsome face had quite a few resonances for her. Byrne Tyler. She remembered him mainly from
Marina Days, a soap set amid Peterborough’s yachting fraternity—though 90 percent of it was shot in the studio with the all-action boating sequences cooked on a graphics mainframe. That had been five or six years ago; Byrne played a teenage hunk crewman. But he had left and gone onto star in action-thriller dramas and interactives. Pretty bad ones if she remembered her tabloid gossip right. There would be media attention with this one.
She stood up. “Helen, was the door locked when you arrived?”
“Yes. And the alarm was on. I have the code, and my palm is one of the keys. Mr. Tyler was happy with that. He was a nice man. He always gave me a Christmas bonus.”
“I’m sure he was lovely. Did you do all his cleaning?”
“Yes. Twice a week. Tuesday and Friday.”
“Which means he could have been here since Tuesday.” She rubbed her arms, trying to generate some warmth. “Rex, go see if the air-conditioning was set like this or it’s glitched. Alison, look around for empty bottles, or anything else,” she said pointedly. It could so easily be an accident. Drunk, stoned, or even sober, a fall could happen. And God knows what a showbiz type like Tyler would take for amusement in the privacy of his secluded secure home.
Amanda went upstairs to check the main bedroom. The door was open, revealing a huge circular waterbed with a black silk sheet over the mattress: there was no top sheet. An equally large mirror was fixed to the ceiling above it. She shook her head in bemusement at the stereotyping. Exactly the kind of seduction chamber a list celebrity sex symbol was expected to have. She remembered most of his scenes in Marina Days involved him being stripped to the waist, or wearing tight T-shirts.
Apart from the offensive decor, there was nothing overtly suspicious. A slower look and she realized the sheet was rumpled, pillows were scattered about. She stared. One person wouldn’t mess up a bed that much, surely? On the bedside cabinet was a champagne bottle turned upside down in a silver ice bucket, a single cut-crystal flute beside it.
When she went back downstairs, Rex told her the air-conditioning was set at maximum. Alison was wearing plastic gloves; she held up a clear zip bag with a silverplated infuser in it.
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