By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  Shuffling the bulky folders in front of her, labelled D Hall patients, into a tidy pile, she pushed them with difficulty into her briefcase and stood up. ‘But you must admit, he is intriguing. That talent doesn’t spring out of nowhere. There’s a family history that needs to be explored. And dilapidated as Jimmy is, he looks nothing like the photograph of his father in here.’ She tapped her case and left.

  CHAPTER 12

  A sexy text from Jin started the day off well, reassuring her he hadn’t run into trouble although there was no indication where he was. She relaxed for a moment at her desk, remembering the last time they had made love and her body tingled, making her shift around in the chair with a surge of longing.

  Outside the window, two crows chased a pigeon across the roofs opposite, ignoring the morning drizzle and cawing loudly as they weaved and revolved, black feathers outspread, to harass their plaything.

  Mentally chiding herself for getting distracted, she opened up an email from the researcher, Matt, headed ‘first dibs’. There were two short paragraphs.

  ‘Hassan Chutani, Leeds, car-wash office worker, married to first cousin, one severely disabled son, one daughter, drives a ten-year-old Vauxhall, restraining order against him from Erica Smythson, otherwise clean record.’

  ‘Bert Dugston, Hackney, sentenced to five years in Wakefield Prison for aggravated assault six weeks ago.’

  Did she want more?

  No wonder Chutani wanted his daughter back and married in the faith, otherwise no grandchildren. At least of the variety he wanted. Didn’t sound wealthy enough to have put out a contract.

  Dugston was out of action although he probably had mates who would be amenable for a spot of damage if he had the money. No, less likely. He’d have wanted personal revenge.

  ‘Not for the moment. Thanks,’ she wrote back.

  Deliberately shutting down the ‘what next?’ question, she switched her attention to finishing the Sanchez book. The final chapter was the most difficult since she was treading a fine line between explaining the hitman’s motivations and not sounding as if she was excusing him. How do you cope if you’re born into a hyena’s lair, with even the pups tearing each other to pieces? Morality, empathy doesn’t come into it, let alone sentimentality. The will to live is the only driving force. Making it to forty was a staggering achievement in the circumstances.

  Her mind constantly flickered to an image of a filthy child, standing alone on a rubbish tip, scavenging for a life. Jin was right, she thought, I do feel a connection to this wreck of a psychopath who left a bloody trail behind him. Still, she had done what he had asked – remembered him – and she would no doubt be well rewarded by readers greedy for the details of his trade. Having written and rewritten, she finally left it as an open question.

  She leant back in her seat, having put in the last dot and emailed it before she changed her mind to her agent. Completing a book usually left her feeling depressed and empty. This time her post-partum dip would have to wait, she thought, since she had a sudden one-day trip to Paris tomorrow to meet booksellers. Then she intended to get a grip of the Erica situation.

  A fast forty-minute run might just be what she needed to clear her head and lungs and ease the stiffness out of her shoulders and her leg. In no mood to be whistled at, she threw on blue jogging pants and a loose, high-necked T-shirt with sleeves. Bored with Hyde Park, she headed north up Regent Street and had to concentrate to avoid the milling shoppers and stationary chatters who littered the pavement.

  Only as she neared All Souls on Langham Place did she notice a black-clad motorcyclist keeping pace with her. What caught her attention was his slow pace, a contrast to his brethren who wended in and out of cars and taxis with careless disregard. Past Broadcasting House he dogged her steps, making her glance across more frequently. Suzuki was emblazoned in blue on the gleaming bike. Round the curve of Park Crescent she lost him momentarily at traffic lights, but within a minute he revved up even closer to her.

  Probably the motorcyclist fancied her and had time to spare, so thought he’d chance his luck. Marylebone Road would fix him since he’d get locked into the traffic flow. Once across the lights on the busy thoroughfare groaning with the early evening build-up, she speeded up York Gate, with the Royal Academy of Music giving her shelter, and into Regent’s Park.

  Stretching out to a fast jog past the elongated Boating Lake, she was soon puffing and sweating. The outer circle was under four miles so she could easily do it at this pace, although too much sitting and smoking was taking its toll. Halfway round she collapsed onto the grass beside the canal and bent forward to rest her head on her knees, her hands curled round her trainers. The tendons down the back of her legs complained, although it eased her spine. Sitting up and arching back, she wriggled her shoulders, then scrambled to her feet. Looking left outside the park to Prince Albert Road, she saw him again. He was sitting motionless on his bike, one foot on the pavement, watching her through his tinted visor.

  Whether he was a romantic stalker or a predatory watcher, he was beginning to get on her nerves. She started to jog on slowly, finding her mobile phone in her belt and keeping it ready in one hand. There was useful cover round the entrance to the zoo so she dodged behind the buildings nearest the road and waited, her back to a wall so he couldn’t see her in advance. High-pitched monkey screams set off a squall in the nearby aviary, a hullabaloo pitching and rattling like a modern opera overture. She waited. The motorcyclist rode past slowly. Once the number plate was in view she clicked her phone several times. Then stepping back out of sight, she doubled back and retraced her steps for York Gate. There was no sight of him as she crossed over into the head of Regent Street and dog-legged home down the backstreets.

  Once inside the front door, she grabbed a towel from the kitchen and rubbed her hair dry of sweat as she booted up her laptop, transferred the photo of the registration number across and emailed it to Matt, who would check out the owner.

  CHAPTER 13

  The yellow Post-it list stuck to the front of an African stone statuette on the far corner of her desk, supposedly a bringer of luck, stared back at her. She sent another email to Jean Malhuret asking about the Kubek lawyer. If she harassed him enough he’d have to reply. That left Wrighton and the Greengate case to excavate.

  Googling Rupert Wrighton, she discovered his latest cause célèbre was campaigning on behalf of fathers accused of child abuse in divorce custody battles. No danger of him being excluded from the airwaves on that one. He had a reputation for sailing close to the wind and this was smart, she thought. Since he was a widower, no one could say he was grinding a personal axe. All altruistic public service.

  While she was contemplating which excuse she could select to secure an interview, her mobile rang.

  ‘Justin Burgoyne here.’ The clipped, upper-class voice made her shoulders twitch. A pause. No doubt for effect. ‘I may have been a little hasty last night. You did rather catch me off balance.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Look, Erica did discuss her cases with me. If you are determined on this idiotic idea then I’d start with the Alliance des Avocats pour les Droits de l'Homme in Paris.’ His French was pitch-perfect and designed for show. ‘That’s...’

  ‘I know what it means,’ she interjected, cursing herself for not having made the connection.

  ‘As to the others. Rupert Wrighton, what can I say? Child abuse cases are a nightmarish swamp. Commercial law is wholesome in comparison. But Erica was touched by the girl’s story and on a mission to save her. Never a good idea in my experience to get personally invested in clients.’

  ‘For sure,’ she said and waited.

  A cough and throat-clearing at the other end. Then silence.

  ‘Greengate?’ she prompted.

  Finally, he said: ‘I shouldn’t talk about this at all. But in the circumstances...’ He sighed. ‘I pointed her towards the Greengate case since I had some dealings with the Stones, who really are nonpar
eil. Well, Paul Stone is. Utterly respectable.’ Another pause. ‘And it was an open and shut case as far as I could see. I thought it would give her useful experience.’

  And maybe get it tidied away at high speed. How little you understood Erica. She doodled a dragon and a maid with a spear on her notepad, while she sensed him squirming at the end of the line.

  ‘So are we square then?’ he said eventually.

  ‘For now,’ she said briskly. ‘I may be in touch if I need anything else.’ She clicked off.

  First stop, Wrighton. The deputy financial editor of Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, owed her a favour for handing over research that she could no longer use since they were about to blow a story she had spent three months on. She’d use their name to get an interview with Wrighton. A phone call to Wrighton’s personal assistant – ‘do just call me Felicity’ – arranged a 9 am appointment two days hence.

  She started to prowl round the office. Was this all a fool’s errand, as Burgoyne suggested? Her common sense fought a battle with her gut instinct. Her leg still ached so she bent down to stretch her tendons. By the time she straightened up, her intuition – that the answer lay in these old cases – had won.

  Her mind ran over what she remembered about Jack Greengate being accused of murdering his wife. An accountant with Cerigo, an upmarket holiday resort company, run by Harman Stone. The name Cerigo reeked of pretentious indulgence. The birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, who rose from the foam created by Uranus’s castrated genitals. She grinned. Bet they don’t put that in the brochures.

  Exclusive retreats on the Costa Brava, California, with more planned for Croatia and Goa. She skimmed through their website and scribbled ‘Russell – Cerigo’ on a yellow Post-it note. He was a freelance forensic accountant, her first port of call for financial gossip. There was nothing she could see on the net other than puff pieces, except on a travel writers’ site on which was posted a notice for a press conference at 6 pm tonight chaired by Paul and Harman Stone for Cerigo and the Alzheimer’s charity. Would it be worth it? They would have had little to do with a lowly accountant’s private life and were hardly front-runners. Still, two Stones at one swoop. The coincidence of it happening that day made it too good an opportunity to miss. Might as well eyeball them and knock them off the list. Just as well she had checked.

  A call to the travel editor on a newspaper she worked for occasionally produced an official invitation, which was gratefully proffered. She promised to send them a paragraph if there was anything interesting and promptly sent a courier round to pick it up.

  Her adrenaline was starting to flow. Her hand hesitated over her phone as she pondered taxi or Herk? His irritation value was quite high, but on the other hand he did talk sense and put brakes on her wilder impulses. And, most importantly, she might need his pathologist friend again at some point. If she were honest she had also appreciated being able to bounce ideas of him. Being overly self-sufficient had its drawbacks.

  Fifteen minutes after her text, he arrived wearing a camouflage jacket and holding a heavy canvas sports bag. His face was guarded, almost embarrassed. After an uncomfortable pause he said with a forced smile: ‘You just caught me. I was off.’

  ‘Off on your travels?’ Tire said, surprised.

  ‘Yeah, Ali’s back, having banged a few heads together in his family and there’s no room for two of us down in the cellar.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Dunno really. Here and there, maybe. Charlie’s got a new lady, so no room there.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said ‘you’ve no idea. You can’t just go wandering off into the twilight.’

  ‘There’s a hostel down at King’s Cross. I’ll stay there till I decide.’

  ‘I need a car at 5.15 tonight.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘That’s fine, but I’ll need to go book into the hostel now and come back.’

  The words came out before she had time to consider.

  ‘You will sling your bag in the spare room. I’m away overnight tomorrow.’

  Noticing his startled expression, she added: ‘Don’t worry I’m not going to seduce you.’

  He laughed, although with a slight blush. ‘I didn’t think so. But you’re intent on organising me and I don’t take kindly to that.’

  ‘You bloody need organising, so stop arguing. And I need help with tracking down what happened to Erica. So you’ll be earning your board and lodging.’

  His head hung down and he ran a hand round his lips, examining his boots with a frown. Just as she thought he was going to refuse he straightened up and said: ‘OK. I’ll stay as long as I can be of use. But no longer, mind.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Within half an hour she was showered and into tight pinstripe trousers over grey suede ankle boots, with a wide-collared, white blouse under a grey velvet jacket. Strings of gilt chains, gold hoop earrings and a white and yellow gold signet ring on her engagement finger added just the right touch of urban flashiness, she thought, nodding to herself in the mirror.

  The car was waiting at the door when she answered Herk’s summons. He stood to attention, holding the door open for her with a serious look on his face, dressed in a ill-fitting, dark grey suit with a white shirt and stained black tie. Inside, she said with a grin as he pulled away from the kerb with a satisfying surge of power: ‘Chauffeurs are allowed to smile nowadays, you know.’

  He took his time answering as he manoeuvred round a parked lorry and then roadworks barriers along Poland Street. Glancing in the mirror, he said: ‘Yeah, well, I thought it might be sensible to cool it while the watchers were there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Couple of guys who’ve been there today, lounging at the street corner trying to look inconspicuous. I thought I’d best look like a hired driver.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they have seen you go in and out?’ she said, leaning forward.

  ‘No, I always go out the back door, tradesman’s entrance. They weren’t watching there.’

  ‘Shit. That’s not good. I hope they are not from Cerigo, since that’s where we’re going.’

  Herk shook his head. ‘I can’t see why a holiday company would be employing heavies.’

  ‘They only turned up today, you said? You’re sure they’re not just louts out for an easy picking?’

  ‘I know what surveillance looks like,’ he said, waving a cab into the space in front. ‘Even if they are rookies. Or trying to look like amateurs to warn you off.’

  So that’s why he’d agreed to stay. As a bodyguard. It was a surprisingly reassuring gesture. In the past she’d never given threats a second thought. They weren’t uncommon when your business was poking into secrets people didn’t want exposed. But then again, murder wasn’t her usual terrain.

  And she’d barely started raising flags. Jean Malhuret’s emails could have been intercepted. Burgoyne could have alerted Wrighton, although it was unlikely from the way he spoke. Or Stone? Maybe Dugston had a tip-off from a dodgy policeman after Matt’s inquiries. None rang bells. Maybe Herk was wrong.

  He drove smoothly, with a cabbie’s patience at the logjam in Oxford Street, and slowed into a near-gridlock in Regent Street full of early evening shoppers crowding and barging across red-lit intersections. Finally, they were swinging onto Marylebone Road heading, Tire noted edgily, for the Hammersmith flyover. In days gone by, she had enjoyed the swoop and curve of these aerial escapes from the stop-start clutter they left behind. She thought she’d never look on one with pleasure again.

  ‘Drop me a text when you want picked up,’ he said as he swung into the crowded entrance to the Kensington Hilton Hotel, which was milling with tourists, three cabs and a bus. ‘I’ll be round and about.’

  Swinging her eye round the carpeted foyer, with its canopy of architectural ceiling lights over the mustard-fronted reception desk, she noticed a sign for Cerigo on an easel. Groups of excited American and Japanese tourists were scattered across the reception area so she
had to wend a circuitous path to follow the arrow. A tall, smartly dressed, white-haired man caught her eye as she ducked and weaved round the chattering globetrotters. His back was to her when she paused at the far end, but one glance had confirmed it was Paul Stone. Even at this distance, his stance suggested authority. He was talking to what looked like a driver, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, who was nodding submissively to instructions.

  Once in the meeting room she was welcomed by a receptionist in a low-cut, emerald sheath dress and signed in under the travel editor’s name on her invitation. Then she settled herself at the back of a dozen rows of white and dark blue cushioned conference chairs, chosen to match a luridly patterned carpet. At the front was a huge screen towering over a small raised platform. With no one beside her, she texted Herk to look out for the driver with his description.

  The room filled up rapidly with an assortment of travel writers and journalists, identifiable by their thrown-together outfits, some sleeker public relations and business types. All sat down expectantly, clearly keen for the meeting to start and finish and the drinking to begin.

  Harman Stone arrived wearing a deep orange jacket over a white shirt and black trousers with slicked-back dark hair. He was short, only about five foot four, with a largish head and elongated chin. Surrounding him was an entourage of two young men who looked like male models, with beige rollneck sweaters under tailored camel jackets. And three women in their twenties, besheathed in various shades of blue on precipitous heels.

  Stone spoke jerkily in a strangely mixed American-English accent from notes while one of his helpers cued in video excerpts of the renovations of Cerigo’s holiday properties in Spain and California.

  Tire stifled a yawn, glancing frequently at the shiny brochure on her knee that had all the information and pictures, neatly packaged. Her mind drifted off to what she could remember of his birth chart. The sleazy, over-indulgent Scorpio planets were certainly obvious. He was born in the mid-1960s, like Wrighton, so the same scattered, chaotic, restless temperament. Mars, Pluto, Uranus: trampled underfoot by a domineering and rejecting father in childhood. He could have stayed a doormat or, if he’d got out from under as he matured, he could have turned into a second-generation bully.