by Clare Curzon
As Fenner seated himself at the davenport to go through its contents she put the question to him. ‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘Sheila was our only child. There was a boy some years later, but he was nothing to do with me.’
‘And what has happened to him?’
‘Do you consider this is germane to your investigation, Miss Zyczynski?’
‘I can’t tell until I know more about it, sir.’
He laid down the papers he was scanning and sat in silence a moment. ‘You are quite right, of course. But Gordon has no part in this. He was killed some ten years back when he was twelve, driving a stolen motor cycle over the quay at Bristol. He had been staying with school friends there. He died in hospital and the post mortem showed that he was high on heroin. Vanessa was in Venice at the time and flew back in a terrible state. She blamed me, madly claiming that if we had still been married the boy would never have been born.
‘It was possibly at that time that she finally began to lose her grip on reality. Or else she chose to create that impression. It’s difficult to tell just how unbalanced – or merely perverse – she actually is. You may have discovered that yourself.’
Staring past her, he seemed to wait for a reply. ‘Sometimes,’ Z offered, ‘she can appear quite shrewd.’
‘Shrewd, and shrewish, yes. I gave up on trying to make sense of it.’
He turned towards Z as though she might have some solution to offer. ‘All the while Sheila was with her I could feel free of responsibility. But now – God knows what will have to be done. So far as my daughter knew, Vanessa has no permanent relationship with anyone.’
Z nodded. She noted the word ‘permanent’. It implied that Vanessa had only casual acquaintances, or the sort of friends who didn’t stay around long. That must have been an added burden for Sheila, unless she was a particularly dutiful and self-effacing daughter. Was that the reason she had never married or formed a lasting relationship herself?
Yesterday Vanessa, exasperated by police questions, had said that, for all she knew, Sheila could have entertained a dozen lovers that last night.
So the younger woman had managed to keep her private life to herself. That could make it difficult to arrive at a complete picture of her. It also limited the cast of obvious suspects – a line of enquiry which would have to be followed up.
‘Ah!’ Gabriel Fenner had extracted a letter from one of the desk’s pigeonholes. ‘We have her solicitor’s address. Newham, Davenay and Partners in Mardham High Street. Are you at all familiar with them?’
‘Yes. Alan Prothero is one of our duty briefs at Mardham nick. And I’ve met Miss Davenay in court. The practice is well respected.’
‘Then, as I need to get back to Cambridge I shall leave matters in their hands. Can you direct me there now?’
He returned the papers to where he had found them, closed and locked the davenport and stood uncertain what to do with the key. ‘Perhaps this should be left with you. The police may need to look into Sheila’s affairs. I don’t want Vanessa to remove anything they might find of interest.’
‘Thank you, sir. And I’d be pleased to come with you.’
They left the outer door ajar as they had found it and went down to Fenner’s car. A fifteen-minute drive took them into Mardham High Street, where Z pointed out the carriage gateway that led into a courtyard cobbled in stable setts. An outer iron staircase led up to a suite of offices furnished throughout in pale sycamore with olive tweed. A middle-aged blonde at reception looked up and smiled at Z in recognition.
‘Dr Fenner,’ the DS introduced him. ‘He’s come about – ’
‘Of course.’ The woman stood and offered her hand. ‘You have our deepest sympathy, sir. Mr Newham will be relieved that you’ve come. We’ve been ringing your Cambridge number since yesterday. I’m afraid he’s out at the moment, but I’m instructed to help you all I can. Do come through.’
Z took a vacant chair in reception, prepared for a long wait. Almost immediately the outer door opened again and Alan Prothero came through. ‘Hi,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Have you come to fill me in?’
He was a rotund young man and to Z’s eyes needed no further stuffing. ‘Not exactly. Have you been picking up a case with us?’
‘Was called in on behalf of one Barry Childe. Interviewed by DS Beaumont and the new wallah, whatsisname.’
‘DI Salmon.’
‘Bit of a change from Angus, what?’
Z avoided being led into personal comparisons. ‘Has Childe been charged?’
‘Yup. Conspiracy to procure and deal drugs. They’ll never make it stick with what they’ve got so far. Not that your DI’s bothered. He made dark hints about more serious charges to follow, so I guess he’s got my client marked for the Winter woman’s murder.’
He danced a little chassé and slammed his briefcase down on the reception desk. ‘In which case, alas, it won’t come my unworthy way. Newsworthy crime is Daddy Newham’s prerogative.’
He treated her to what he considered his dazzling smile. ‘When are you going to come out for a drink with me? I’d like to say a meal, but, as ever, I’m skint.’
‘In which case,’ she responded, ‘I must admit I couldn’t afford to.’
‘Oh, touché, cruel woman. But I shall live in hopes. Anyway, what are you here for, if not for me?’
‘Accompanying a client,’ she said simply. She would rather have said nothing, but any attempt at noticeable discretion might dry up Prothero for future disclosures.
He seemed satisfied that this matter could not concern him, smiled his dazzler again and went off to his own quarters.
‘I wasn’t sure you wanted me to stay on,’ Z told Dr Fenner when he emerged some twenty minutes later from the senior partner’s office.
‘I’m glad you did. I’d like to take you somewhere pleasant for lunch.’
When she seemed to hesitate he gave his rare smile and added, ‘In case you feel that that would waste valuable working time, we could always discuss your interest in the case.’
‘I was actually wondering which restaurant you’d find most pleasant,’ she lied. It had shocked her a little to hear him use the word ‘case’. It sounded so impersonal, referring to his daughter’s murder. She found such ingrained detachment quite formidable.
For the second time that morning she marvelled how separation could affect a father’s relationship. With Neil the distancing had been a failure of communication. Sheila and her father had lost years through living apart, yet there had certainly been close understanding. Without her his life would be diminished now, but he would never allow it to show.
‘Shall we try Amersham?’ he suggested. ‘There looked to be some reasonable places in the Old Town.’
They went to Gilbey’s where Max sometimes took her, and although Fenner chose sparingly from the menu for himself, he seemed satisfied. His mind, she recognised, was more on dealing with present problems.
‘From my knowledge of Sheila,’ he said, as they waited for the main course, ‘I find it difficult to imagine anyone being violently opposed to her. Some might have thought her hard because she was single-minded. But she was kind with it. I know she listened to others’ views, because she had taken them into account in final decisions. What mattered most to her was her great project’s success. Which makes me inclined to believe that in business she crossed someone more obdurate than herself.’
‘That is something we shall need to look into.’
‘You will want access to her bank accounts. I can arrange that as her sole executor.’
Z glanced swiftly at him
‘Yes; curious, isn’t it? – that she should expect me to outlive her. In case I should fail to, her solicitors were to take that on. But I was her first choice.’ The realisation moved him, and he sat a while without speaking.
‘As I recall it, her share of the business is in the neighbourhood of twelve per cent. Mine is forty, and the bank loan covers the rest. There had been a deal of initial outlay,
but this year, for the first time, we are expecting a small profit. Without Sheila in control, I imagine the bank will be pressing to sell. As I am most loath to have that happen, it is essential to find someone reliable to take over the whole operation.’
‘That won’t be easy.’
‘Especially as I am fully occupied in Cambridge. My programme is set up for the next three years. I simply do not have the time. We really should be looking for two directors; one a horticultural specialist and the other a financial controller.’
‘Perhaps you can persuade the bank to help with that.’
‘Let us hope so. On the botanical side I should be able to get advice. I wonder, Miss Zyczynski, if you would spare time to come to Barclays with me this afternoon? I should like to get some agreement in general terms before I go back to Cambridge, and I want to insist that the bank makes all Sheila’s affairs open to the police for their investigation.’
‘Perhaps you should have someone more senior with you?’
He tilted his head to look at her directly. ‘Your superintendent appears to have full confidence in you. That’s good enough for me.’
‘Thank you. I shall report everything to him, of course.’
‘Of course. Now, will you have pudding, or cheese, or both?’
Z opted for coffee, wondering why he hadn’t disclosed what was to happen to his daughter’s shares in the company. As executor he should know by now.
Chapter Twelve
Paul Wormsley. He smiled sardonically. The name had first appeared as a typographical error: some chit of a girl hitting the keyboard with a rogue finger. Worsley was the name he’d selected. Wormsley was how it came out in the initial paperwork, so they’d ordered it to be corrected. But it had amused him, so he’d stuck with it. Who would willingly choose a surname like that, reduce himself to subterranean level, allied to one of the lowest forms of garden life?
So here he was, a worm with its own birth certificate, passport, driving licence, life insurance: all the lying paraphernalia that upper officialdom provided to deceive its own lower orders. An ironic situation, and now with this added little quirk. He liked it.
While retaining his initials as a mnemonic, the pseudonym was the best part of his disguise, better than the hair dye, spectacles, coloured lenses and nose job. It made him feel safe – for most of the time. At others he’d wake in the early hours in a cold sweat, almost juddering, having been back in that other person, remembering Peader’s huge, strangling hands, Micky’s flick-knife, Monk’s death-dealing eyes as he stared back from the dock, promising revenge.
They’d all gone down for a very long time. The charges of murder, and conspiracy to murder, had ensured that, on top of all the theft and fraud stuff. As for himself, he’d got off almost scot-free, sold them out, served his token term, washed his hands and run. And run and run and run, and must ever more keep running.
Witness Protection was all right for a time, until you got slack and the authorities forgot you; but the onus was on yourself, living the new life until the mask moulded the features underneath. Mentally, as well as physically.
That was his own life sentence. Piers Wilson was no more. There was just this fabricated half-person deprived of the familiar haunts, the easy women, the buccaneer life. He lived now as they allowed him to, at a level considered appropriate; rusticated – the literal version of his onetime headmaster’s threat; tamely earning in a year what he could once have knocked off in a single operation.
So, he’d escaped a life sentence; yet it didn’t mean he was free. When sometimes the present situation irked he needed to remind himself of the ultimate advantage: that now, according to official documentation, his wasn’t the hand that had dabbled in blood.
Driving to work this morning through layers of shifting mist, he was preoccupied as ever with this swinging between unease, resentment and a wry kind of relief. He could finally chase it with the thought that he’d put one over on a competent set of villains. Then he could glow a little, with pride at his own devious duplicity.
There was a pile-up just after access on to the M25. It held him trapped in the middle of a long tail-back. In his rear-view mirror he watched two cars immediately behind make awkward three-point turns and sneak out by the hard shoulder. Sourly he hoped they’d run straight into emergency services on their way to the crash.
Time was when he’d have been the first to do that. Not now, though. Had to keep a low profile, act suitably wormlike.
He looked in the mirror again and recognised the car now moving up on his tail. Martin Chisholm was getting out to light a fag and rubberneck on the snarl-up ahead. As he strolled by, Wormsley reached a hand through the open window and sketched a salute. Chisholm came across. “Morning,’ he said. ‘Hope this isn’t going to take all day.’
He was looking good, considering the hours he kept. Wormsley wondered if he knew how his little boyfriend fretted in his absences, and whether it would bother him at all if he did.
‘Looks as if they’re clearing one lane,’ Chisholm commented, staring ahead, nodded and returned to his car.
As they started off it struck Wormsley that the man was heading in the wrong direction for London. A few miles farther, and in his mirror he saw Chisholm’s Saab indicating to turn off. On a sudden urge he flashed to do the same, made it in time, dawdled up the exit towards the next roundabout and let the other man overtake. Well, that’s what powerful cars were about, weren’t they? He would put money on Chisholm’s Saab against his run-of-the-mill Peugeot any day. But speed limits being what they were, he’d every chance of keeping the man in sight.
He switched his car-phone to open speech and pressed the listed codel. ‘Jill? Something’s come up; may take an hour or two. Anything in the book that you can’t manage on your own?’
Reassured that there wasn’t, because the pert little miss thought she was better at the job than him in any case, he smirked, said, ‘Right then. Be seeing you,’ and cut the call.
Martin Chisholm had turned left and left again. In the 30mph zone of Chiswell Green he became aware of Wormsley nosing up behind. By profession primed to caution, he weighed the possibility that he was being deliberately followed.
The man could just be nosy. There was, though, a faint chance of something less innocent, though he didn’t see how Wormsley’s life and his own could have crossed at any point. He just hoped that Neil, in his contact with the agent for Ashbourne House, hadn’t let any indiscretion slip out. He would need to enquire just when the man had shown an interest in Beattie Weyman’s place, and where he’d first heard of it.
With minimal warning he took another left turn at speed, heading towards the RHS rose garden, and grinned in the mirror to see Wormsley go gunning past on the main road. Chisholm made a circuit and came back towards where he’d entered, pulling up close behind a large furniture van unloading on to the pavement.
After three minutes he saw Wormsley turn in and roar past in supposed pursuit. So, why? he asked himself. Merely a case of idle curiosity? Or was the man on to him? Either way, it could be dealt with.
He reversed from the furniture van’s cover, then shot out again into the traffic stream. Let the fool wander through the Royal Horticultural Society’s rose gardens, under the misted skeletons of arches and pergolas, searching among the starkly wintering bushes with their crinkled leaves and flowerless stems. For himself, he had no business there, and no intention of lingering to be caught up with. He had a meeting set up in St Albans which he couldn’t afford to miss. Wormsley was something he’d deal with at a later time.
Wormsley’s Peugeot was parked a little way before the entrance to the show gardens. It was warm inside the car, and the frosted vista ahead uninviting. He waited, de-misting the windows, considering it most unlikely that his prey was ordering bushes for spring delivery. No, the man had arranged an assignation here. The unlikely venue meant underhand business.
It wasn’t his first suspicion of Chisholm. He knew already that he
was a phoney. He might run a decent car and know all the dealer-spiel, but he didn’t sell from any retail agency in the West End. When he’d thought up that background detail he hadn’t known there’d be someone living in the same building who knew the far side of the London car trade, new and secondhand.
That welcoming dinner party which Beattie threw had provided a deal of useful information. Watching Chisholm so closely had stirred an elusive memory. He’d seen the man somewhere before; or else someone very similar indeed. Not in this country, though. Japan, he wondered? Dubai? Dublin? It hadn’t been all that long ago, but the circumstances escaped him.
There was a possibility he worked undercover for one of the government agencies. Not that that should cause panic. By now his own tracks were competently covered. If the other started to dig he’d be firmly met with official stonewalling. Any file on him was no longer accessible.
He waited a full half-hour before braving the mist and frost to climb out and scour the area for the Saab. It was nowhere to be seen, and the traffic gates to the RHS’s gardens were dismally padlocked, entrance accorded only to whatever hardy pedestrians cared to brave the monochrome wasteland. He wasn’t fool enough to draw attention to himself in there.
But failing to discover Chisholm wasn’t total disappointment. Clearly the man had caught on to being tailed, and taken evasive action. Which, in itself, looked professional and was proof of something to hide.
Old habits die hard, even for a worm conversion. He was intrigued, and the scent of potential profit was growing stronger in his nostrils. Profit while retaining anonymity: that was vital. The risk was too great otherwise.
It wasn’t until he was halfway back to his little studio and photographic shop that two unrelated facts merged in his mind. The late Sheila Winter, fellow resident at Ashbourne House, had owned and managed a garden centre. Martin Chisholm, mystery man, had disappeared in the neighbourhood of a wholesale rose supplier.
Was it too great a leap of imagination to suppose a connection between the man and the murdered woman? Something sinister? Wormsley wasn’t sure after all, that he wanted to follow up that question. Getting himself noticed today might not have been a smart thing to do.