A taxi circled the square and pulled up a few yards away. I waited. Perhaps it was Rebecca coming home. The back door opened. A young couple paid the driver before making their way to the house next door. Defeated, I turned to walk back to the Tube station.
I had a thought, turned back, and walked up the black and white tiled pathway. The two men who lived in the flat on the second floor, what were their names? Nick and Gary? They might know where Rebecca was. I glanced up to confirm that their lights were on, a lambent glow behind gold-colored curtains. I pressed the button labeled Nick Carpenter. After a few seconds a voice came over the intercom.
“Yes? Who is it?” His voice was smooth and warm, like cafe latte.
“My name is Kate,” I answered. “We met about a week ago. I’m a friend of Rebecca’s.”
After a pause, Nick replied. “What can I do for you, Kate?”
“I’m worried about her.” I hated talking into the brass speaker plate. “Can I speak to you inside?”
11
There was a long silence, before I heard the door click open. Stepping into the elegant entryway, I waited, unsure whether Nick would come down to meet me. After a minute or so, he appeared at the top of the gently-lit stairs and waved me up. He was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, with bare feet. Music leaked from the open door of his apartment. I recognized the percussive piano notes of Thelonius Monk.
“Thank you,” I said, a little breathless from hurrying up the stairs. “I haven’t heard from Rebecca since Sunday and she hasn’t been to the office for two days. I’m worried that she might be ill…”
I stopped, gripping the banister. Nick had an aura. It was faint but there.
“Have you seen her?” I finished, but my thoughts were on what Nick’s aura could mean. What danger could there be to two people in the same building? Poisoning, toxic air, what was the name of that gas? Carbon monoxide. Or a building collapse? I realized my hand was hurting from grasping the smooth wood rail so tightly and I let go, feeling unsteady on my feet.
Nick cocked his head to one side. “Not since Friday actually. We chatted for a minute or two while we picked up our mail downstairs. I didn’t see her over the weekend because Gary and I were away until Sunday evening. We went to Brussels on the Eurostar, did some shopping, ate some amazing food and lots and lots of chocolate.” He shrugged. “Sorry, that’s all irrelevant, I know. So that was it. I didn’t see her this morning because Gary and I overslept. We just flew out of here in a rush to get to work.”
“She’s not answering her phone or responding to texts,” I said, “and she didn’t answer when I rang the bell just now.”
Nick shrugged. “Then she’s probably away. Business, pleasure…” His voice trailed away. “I don’t know what to say, Kate. It’s not unreasonable that an adult woman would be out of touch for a day or two. A little romantic liaison maybe?”
“There are no lights on in her flat.”
He gave me a look that made me smile in spite of the anxiety. “I said romantic. Candles, firelight? Get it?”
“Okay, I know,” I said. “But I still don’t think it’s that. She wouldn’t miss work.”
Or would she? I couldn’t be sure of that. This was probably a major overreaction. Still, having come this far, it would be good to know that she was all right.
“Can I go up and knock on the door?” I asked. “If she’s there with someone, she might answer even if it’s only to say ‘go away’. Once I know she’s all right, I can stop worrying.”
Nick nodded. “Of course. I’ll come with you.”
Gary appeared behind him. “What’s going on?”
“We’re just going to check on Rebecca,” Nick replied. I stared at Gary, but there was no aura. Goosebumps came up on my arms. What did Nick and Rebecca have in common that they would have auras, yet Gary didn’t?
Gary scowled and turned away. I got the impression he didn’t like me, but couldn’t think why not. We had never actually spoken to each other.
Nick led the way up the stairs to the next floor and then along the carpeted hallway. I hesitated before knocking on the door. As if by mutual agreement we both stood stock still, barely breathing, listening for any sound from inside. After half a minute, I looked at him and he nodded. I knocked again. This time I heard a rustling sound near the door followed by a loud and plaintive meow.
“Caspian!” Nick exclaimed. “Rebecca wouldn’t go away and leave the cat alone. She always asks me to check on him if she plans on being out late or is away on business.”
The cat, hearing our voices, began yowling and scratching the inside of the door.
“Oh, poor baby,” said Nick. “He sounds hungry.”
“And angry,” I added.
“Wait here. I have a key. I’ll be right back.” Nick disappeared, silent on bare feet. I leaned my forehead against the door, murmuring to the cat, who now sounded desperate to get out. Impatiently, I waited for Nick to reappear, which he did after a few minutes, bounding up the stairs, holding the key aloft.
“I’m coming, precious kitty,” he called as he put the key in the lock.
“Be careful. Make sure he doesn’t make a dash for freedom.”
As he pushed the door open just a few inches, I knelt down to block the cat’s exit. A cannonball of soft grey fur shot into my hands.
“It’s okay,” I cooed as I picked him up.
“Oh yuck, his litter tray needs cleaning out,” said Nick, poking his head through the door. I cradled a wriggling Caspian in my arms while Nick pushed the door open and felt around inside to find a light switch. Clutching the cat tightly, I followed him in and closed the front door behind me. The central heating was running. The air was hot and fetid. A sweet and cloying odor caught in my throat and made me gag. I bent to release Caspian, who fled up the hallway towards the bedroom. The motion of bending over made my stomach heave. I thought I might be sick.
Nick’s face was ashen. “What on earth is that?”
I put my hand over my nose and mouth, taking short sharp breaths. A sense of impending disaster weighed on me like a giant hand pressing down on my shoulders.
Nick walked towards the living room, flipping switches as he went, releasing bright light into every corner. I dragged myself a few paces behind him, terrified of what we would find. The silence was overpowering, a physical entity as strong as the smell. My head began to ache again.
Nick stopped at the entry to the living room, reaching in to turn on another light, and I saw him framed in the doorway, motionless. It seemed that minutes had passed before he spoke although I knew it was only seconds.
“Oh God, no,” he said.
Feeling detached from my own body, I watched myself take the few steps towards the door, watched Nick move aside to let me in. Both of us standing together, side by side, wordless, still.
Rebecca lay on her back in a pool of broken glass, the remains of the shattered coffee table. White roses, thrown from their ruined vase, rested all around her, the tips of the petals turning yellow. Blossoms of rusty black patterned the white carpet and Rebecca’s cream sweater. All color was drained from the scene, like an old black and white photograph, apart from the red of Rebecca’s hair, still as vibrant as ever. An empty wine bottle lay close by and the stem of a broken wine glass rested in her hand. The air around her head was perfectly still. The aura had gone.
A bloody print down the front of the white sofa. I imagined her fingers grappling for a hold. That detail hit my stomach like a fist. Rebecca had been hurt but hadn’t died immediately. How awful to lie there, feeling your life slipping away and not able to save yourself.
“Oh, Rebecca,” I whispered.
“I’m calling the police,” said Nick. His voice came as a shock in the silence. I heard the tapping on the cellphone and then him calmly saying that there had been an accident and to please send someone. He gave the address and put his phone back in his pocket.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said.
“I can’t look at this any more. I’m going to make sure Caspian has food.”
I stood alone, paralyzed and numb, then sank to the floor, dizzy, while the room spun around me. Acid rose into my throat. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the bathroom, where I vomited several times. I remained there, curled up on the tile floor until I heard Nick tap on the door.
“Kate, the police are here,” he said quietly. “Can you come out? I hate talking to people in uniforms.”
I went to the sink and washed my face and hands and took several gulps of cold water. Noticing that the door of cabinet was slightly open, I peeked in to see that one shelf was empty. The bottle of aftershave and tubes of shaving cream had gone. That was odd. I wondered if the boyfriend had moved out.
Wiping my hands on a fluffy pink towel, I took a deep breath before leaving the bathroom. Two officers were with Nick in the living room, one of them in a corner talking on his radio. The other one introduced himself, but my mind was too full to absorb his name. I thought I might be sick again and stayed close to the door.
When the second policeman had finished his call, he came over and murmured something to his colleague, then turned to me.
“Sergeant Wilson,” he said holding out a hand to shake mine. “DCI Clarke and the medical examiner will be here soon. Meanwhile, we need to ask you a few questions.”
“Why do you need a detective?” asked Nick. “It’s obviously an accident.”
“It’s routine,” replied Wilson.
He peered at me. “Are you okay? We should go into the hall. It’s cooler out there. You too, sir,” he added, glancing at Nick.
I moved on leaden legs out through the front door and across the landing to lean against the banister. Nick crouched down by the wall and Wilson took a notebook and pencil from a pocket and ran through a list of basic questions: names, addresses, relationship to the deceased.
Deceased I thought. He had never known Rebecca as a person, a living being. She was just a dead body to be accounted for in his files. The mention of death reminded me of Nick’s aura, and I lifted my eyes to look at him. The aura was distinct but the air was moving slowly. What did it mean? I started feeling sick again.
“Miss Benedict?” Wilson was looking at me.
“Sorry.”
“How did you get into the apartment?” Wilson asked. Nick explained that he had a key because he looked after the cat. Wilson looked around. “Where is it?”
“What?”
“The cat.”
“He ran into the bedroom when we got here,” replied Nick. “I took his food bowl and some water in there for him when we got here. Poor thing was starving and probably scared.” He paused. “Do you think he knew his owner was dead? A dog would know, I think, but maybe not a cat…” he trailed off when he saw the expression on Wilson’s face.
“What time did you get here?” Wilson asked.
Nick looked at me. “About eight?”
I nodded. Wilson checked his watch and wrote something in his notes.
There were voices on the stairway, but Wilson continued to jot in his notebook, the sound of his pencil scratching on the paper loud on the quiet landing.
A few minutes later, two men appeared at the top of the stairs. One, a tall thin man with a balding head, carrying a leather case, the other, young, good-looking with blonde hair and a nice suit. The younger one introduced himself. “I’m Detective Inspector Clarke,” he said. “I’d just like to ask a few questions.”
I was surprised at how young he was, maybe in his mid-thirties, and I wondered at his choice of profession, dealing with violence and death on a daily basis.
“We’ve given the officer all our information,” said Nick. “And I really have to go. Gary will be wondering where I am.”
“A couple more minutes,” Clarke said in a tone that brooked no argument.
He looked at me. “When did you last see or hear from…” He checked a piece of paper in his hand. “From Miss Williams?”
“Sunday lunchtime. We had lunch together. At a Chinese restaurant.”
“And you didn’t come back here with her afterwards?”
“No. We left the restaurant at about two. I went straight home.”
Clarke nodded, wrote some notes and turned his attention to Nick.
“And you sir? Where were you this weekend?”
Nick described his weekend trip to Brussels, keeping the details short and precise and not even mentioning the chocolate.
“So you wouldn’t have known if Miss Williams had any visitors over the weekend?”
“Sorry, but no.”
“She was supposed to be meeting her boyfriend on Sunday evening,” I said. “We’d made plans to go see a movie, but then she canceled that. We had lunch together instead.”
“Did she tell you what time she was planning to meet him, or where?”
“No.” I shook my head. I was confused by his questions. “But this was just an accident, wasn’t it?”
Clarke didn’t answer. He looked at Nick. “You didn’t see anyone arriving or leaving on Sunday evening?”
“No, I’ve seen her boyfriend a few times, coming and going but, as I said, we were away this weekend.” He paused, frowned, straightened the cuffs on his shirt.
“Good.” Clarke scribbled something down in his notebook. “I’ll need you to give detailed descriptions of the man and we will draw up an identikit picture.”
“There’s a photo of the boyfriend in Rebecca’s room,” I said. “His name is Edward.”
“You’ve met him?” Clarke asked.
“No, Rebecca just told me his name.”
“Do you have a second name, any idea where he works?” Clarke asked.
“Nothing on the second name, but she said he works in technology and travels a lot. Can I go get the photo?”
Clarke spoke to Wilson. “Please go with Miss Benedict.”
I followed the police officer back into the apartment and down the hallway. When we entered the room, he gave me a pair of latex gloves. “Put these on, please,” he said. I noticed that he was already wearing some.
I picked up the photo of Rebecca and the dark-haired young man with his arm around her shoulders, looked at it briefly and turned it face down in my hands. It was too painful to see the picture of my friend, alive and smiling. After following Wilson back up the hall, I held the picture out for Inspector Clarke to see. Clarke gestured for me to show it to Nick.
“This is the boyfriend?” he asked.
“No, it’s not,” said Nick. “The boyfriend is taller and older. This is Rebecca’s brother.”
“Her brother?” I exclaimed. “But she told me her only relatives were her parents.”
“Her only living relatives, maybe,” said Nick. “Her brother – I think his name was Andrew – was killed in a climbing accident about two years ago, not long after I moved in here. She was heartbroken. That’s the first time I looked after Caspian for her, when she went home for the funeral. She was gone for a week or so.”
I swallowed down the hurt I felt that Rebecca hadn’t chosen to share this with me. But then, I reflected, I hadn’t told Rebecca about Toby, hadn’t really even talked much about my mother’s death. Funny how you could spend time with someone and not say anything very meaningful.
Clarke cleared his throat to get our attention. “Is there anything else that you think might be helpful for me to know at this point?” he asked.
I hesitated. I should tell him about the missing toiletries in the cabinet, but that meant admitting that I’d been poking around. He looked at me closely. “You’re really pale. Are you okay?”
Not really. I felt exhausted and sad, but I said I was all right. Against my better judgment, I told him about seeing the aftershave and shaving cream a week ago, and then noticing they weren’t there any longer.
Clarke winced. “You used the bathroom this evening?”
“I was being sick,” I said, and he nodded.
“Understandable
,” he said as he wrote something in his notebook. “We’ll need you to come to the station for fingerprints. And you too, please, Mr. Carpenter.”
“Do you think Rebecca was murdered?” asked Nick. He was as pale as I felt.
Clarke shook his head. “I don’t think anything yet.” He looked up from his notebook. “Were the lights on when you arrived?”
“No,” said Nick. “We turned them all on. That means it was probably daylight when she died, doesn’t it?”
“How long has she been dead?” I asked.
“I’ll know more when the medical examiner has finished,” Clarke said. “Meanwhile, is there anything else that you can tell me?”
“I was supposed to be looking out for her.”
I didn’t realize I’d even said the words out loud until Clarke cocked his head to one side. “Looking out for her? Had she indicated that she felt she was in danger? Was she depressed? Or sick?”
I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks and neck, and I touched my throat nervously. I couldn’t tell him about the aura.
“No, nothing like that,” I said, which was the truth.
The silence stretched out between us, Clarke waiting for me to clarify my comment in some way. I had said more than enough, though, and I leaned back against the wall, hoping he would leave me alone.
For the first time, Clarke smiled, a minuscule lifting of the corners of his mouth. He was really quite attractive, I thought. His eyes were the color of malachite. He looked good in his pristine white shirt and dark green tie.
“Thank you for your help, both of you. Officer Wilson will finish up here.”
He turned away to answer his cell phone, which was buzzing in his hand. Wilson came over and asked Nick if he’d go to the station to help work up an identikit picture of the boyfriend.
“Yes, I can do that tomorrow,” Nick said. He stared up at the ceiling. “I could do with a ciggy, but I gave up smoking three months ago.”
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 7