The Aura

by Carrie Bedford

  In the long silence that fell between us, I was aware of a low buzzing noise from the fluorescent light fixture overhead, and the gentle hum of traffic on the road below. If not the man in the black coat or Montgomery, then who?

  “Gary?” I asked.

  Clarke shook his head. “Rebecca died some time between five and seven on that Sunday evening, maybe eight at the latest. Gary showed me validated tickets proving he and Nick were on the fast train from Brussels that got into St. Pancras at 8.25pm. No way Gary could have done it.”

  I propped my chin in my hands, elbows on the table, fighting the urge to sleep. I wanted Montgomery to be guilty. I despised him for having an affair with Rebecca. I’d thought a lot about what he’d said about Rebecca changing since she met me. I remembered when she’d make a joke about loving money and had then fallen silent as though wondering if money was really enough. Was she really planning to change her lifestyle and leave Montgomery? I wished she’d had a chance to do that. I wished she’d told me what she was planning.

  A young man in a leather jacket knocked on the glass door and poked his head in.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Matthew, but we just got the message about that ID you’ve been waiting for.”

  He came in to hand a slip of paper to Clarke, closed the door quietly behind him, leaving the two of us in a soft shell of silence. Clarke read the message. “Good, good,” he murmured.

  “Something to do with the case?”

  “Yes, Gary, Nick’s partner, told me that he saw a man going up to Rebecca’s apartment about a month ago. An older man, not the boyfriend. He’s still very cut up about Nick, of course, and it’s taken him a few days to come forward with this. But, as there appears to be a link between Rebecca’s death and Nick’s, he said he’ll do whatever he can to help. He’s coming into the London station tomorrow to work on the composite facial image.”

  “Do you trust Gary?” I asked. “Doesn’t it seem convenient that he’s coming up with this picture now?”

  “He’s motivated to find Nick’s killer,” Clarke said. “It makes sense to me. More often than not, witnesses don’t come forward unless they have a personal interest in a case. There’s an understandable reluctance to get involved. Some are nervous around police officers, others worry about how much time it might take. But when the victim is a family member, a lover or a good friend, then people open up. They want to talk about the person they knew, to make sure the police understand why it’s important to find the killer.”

  Standing up, Clarke stared out of the window. I thought about Peter Montgomery and Rebecca. According to Montgomery, she’d broken things off between them on Saturday morning, yet I’d seen on her Sunday and she hadn’t said a word about it. In fact, she’d told me she was seeing her boyfriend on Sunday evening. That was why she’d canceled our movie outing. Why would she lie?

  Strictly speaking, I thought, she hadn’t told me she was seeing Edward on Sunday. I’d assumed that she was, and she hadn’t denied it. Which meant one of two things. One was that she’d decided she didn’t want to go to a movie with me. I dismissed that idea. All she had to do was say she didn’t want to go. The other was that she was seeing someone else that evening, someone she couldn’t tell me about. A new boyfriend? It was possible. Perhaps she’d found someone else; that was her motivation for dumping Montgomery. But then why wouldn’t she tell me about him? For some reason, she had kept the identity of her Sunday evening visitor a secret.

  “Nice view,” Clarke said turning round and leaning on the windowsill. “But I never liked Oxford.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, it’s very clubby. Exclusive, as in excluding anyone who isn’t part of the university system.”

  “That’s funny. I’m not sure my brother would agree with you.”

  His cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. “Sorry, I forgot he’s a professor here. Well, if he’s like you, I’m sure he’s a good guy.”

  It was my turn to blush, and I bent my head over an imaginary speck of dust on my jeans.

  Clarke pushed himself away from the windowsill and came back to his seat.

  “Montgomery will be back in London in two days. I’ll bring him in for questioning then, but I don’t think he’s our killer.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “So many secrets.” I was still thinking of the ambiguity about Rebecca’s Sunday evening commitment.

  “Everyone has secrets,” he replied. “In my line of work, you come to think of it as normal.”

  “Not everyone.”

  “I think you do,” he said. I felt warmth flood my cheeks.

  “I don’t believe that you killed Rebecca or Nick, but I am certain that you’re hiding something. If it’s something that could help the case, I’d appreciate your honesty.”

  “It’s not. There’s nothing.”

  “Okay. Will you come into the station tomorrow afternoon to look at Gary’s sketch?”

  “Of course. How’s he doing? Gary?”

  “Not so well. I can only imagine his pain,” said Clarke. “To find someone to love and to imagine spending your life with him, only to lose him like that. It’s devastating.”

  My heart vibrated with the emotion in his voice. And I knew what his secret was.

  “Does everyone know?” I asked. “About you?”

  A momentary look of surprise crossed his face. And then he laughed. “Not everyone. Just those that need to know. My boss, my assistant, a few others. And now you.”

  “Why do you need to keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “But I don’t feel the need to go round informing everyone either.” He checked his watch. “I have to get back to London. Take it easy. And let me know if you think of anything at all that might help. I’ll be in touch, of course.”

  I watched while he stood up and put his coat on, noted the way he did up the buttons, and pulled the collar up. Every movement was precise and efficient. I supposed that made him a good detective, organized, calm. He moved around from behind the desk, briefcase in hand, and paused to look at me for a second.

  “Be careful. I’ll see you soon.” He smiled, but I couldn’t reciprocate. And then he was gone and I was alone in the glass-walled room.

  I pulled on my coat and scarf and made my way through the busy police station to the front entrance. Under heavy, piercing rain, I strode quickly to the bus stop. I could have called Leo or Olivia to come to fetch me, but I was content to be out and about and by myself for a while. As I passed a fish and chip shop, the enticing smell of frying oil and vinegar made me realize I was hungry.

  The warm, steamy interior was a welcome respite from the biting cold. An Indian woman, wearing a green and yellow sari underneath a blue anorak, waited for her order. She was listening to an iPod, the telltale white cables dangling from her ears. She smiled, but it wasn’t clear if the smile was meant for me or was in response to something she was listening to.

  While I waited for a small order of chips, the door opened with the jangle of a bell, and a blast of cold air. A middle-aged man went straight to the counter, almost pushing me aside. He was talking to himself and banging his leg with a rolled-up umbrella. His jeans and lumberjack jacket were worn and dirty. He also had an aura. When he saw me staring at him, he bared his teeth at me. I envisaged him dying in an alley somewhere, hungry and freezing in the middle of the night.

  I handed the shopkeeper some money. “Can you give him a double order of whatever he’d like, and a carton of milk?” I asked him.

  “Whatever you say, miss.”

  The man took the food and headed for the door. He turned his head very slightly and growled “thanks” before exiting and slamming the door behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “You need to call Josh,” Olivia said over breakfast the next day. “He’ll want to know about your call with Montgomery.” She’d been staying at Leo’s, driving him to work in the morning, while I made breakfast for the boys and took them
to school. For a few days, the routine had been surprisingly pleasurable, but I was beginning to feel the need to get back to London. I missed Josh, I missed my job. I wanted to resume some sort of normal life.

  My cellphone rang while I was putting my plate in the sink. I thought it might be Jack. He’d tried to reach me a couple of times, but I’d missed his calls. To my surprise, it was Alan.

  “Kate. When are you coming back to work?”

  “You want me back?”

  “Want isn’t exactly the word I’d use. But I need you. We still have work to do. I can’t do it all myself.”

  “Okay,” I said. I was ready. I assumed that Jack was the cause of Alan’s change of heart. I was grateful; I’d take Jack out for lunch as soon as he was available. “But I may need time off occasionally to deal with some things related to the murder inquiry, and other issues. If you can handle that, I can start again tomorrow.”

  “Hold my feet to the fire, why don’t you? You’ll be asking for a raise next.”

  “Well, actually…”

  “Just come on back and get some work done. Then we can talk.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I was up to my elbows in dishwater when the phone rang again, dancing around on the countertop. I leaned over to see who was calling. It was Josh. I rushed to pick up the phone and it slipped out of my soapy hands, slid along the counter and balanced precariously for a second before tipping over the edge. I caught it with my foot, breaking its fall before it hit the tile floor. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I picked it up. It was still intact and working.

  “Everything all right?” asked Josh. “It sounded as though you were playing football with the phone.”

  “Well, I dropped you but then I caught you,” I said. “The phone, that is.”

  “I was thinking of coming to Oxford to see you, if you’re up to it?”

  “Of course. But are you? Your injuries were far worse than mine.”

  He told me the doctor had signed him off the day before, said it was okay for him to walk, but not too much.

  “I love my parents,” he said. “But I need to get out for a while. I’m missing you. And there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  We agreed that I’d meet him at the station at three that afternoon.

  I spent the rest of the day cleaning and shopping, and prepared dinner for the family. It was the least I could do to thank Leo and Olivia for looking after me. I washed my favorite jeans and shirt, polished my boots, and blow-dried my hair. Stepping outside, I took a deep breath. The weather had changed in the past few days, the rain and mist giving way to clear skies. It was very cold, but I preferred that to the rain.

  When Josh came through the ticket barrier, my heart fluttered. I felt warm from head to toe. We hugged, our heavy wool coats getting in the way.

  “Do you want to go for a coffee to warm up?” he asked.

  The cafe was crowded, the tables piled with open laptops and steaming mugs; a faint aroma of unwashed clothes mingled with the smell of coffee. A group of students in one corner appeared to have set up an informal debate club, arguing loudly about climate change and population growth. At a table nearby, a professorial-looking type talked earnestly with three young women who jotted words in spiral-bound notebooks.

  Josh bought us both coffees and scones while I found a table for two next to the window. For a few minutes, we talked about Josh’s doctor visits and how he was feeling. He looked good. The pallor was gone. He seemed to be walking well, apart from a slight limp.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked.

  He reached over to take my hand in his. “I missed you so much. It’s time to get back to London so we can spend some time together.”

  I smiled. That’s how I felt too.

  “But you did say there was something you wanted to talk about?” I reminded him.

  He glanced around, as though checking that no one was listening.

  “Remember your last full day at work, when I was stuck in Alan’s office for hours?”

  “Hmm. I think so. What was going on?”

  “Alan and Jack told me that there was some financial risk to continuing with the Montgomery project. They didn’t elaborate, but I’ve had plenty of time to do a bit of research. And I talked with my Dad. He used to be a corporate attorney, so he knows about this stuff.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly.

  “Montgomery Group is probably the tenth largest real estate developer in London right now. Maybe a little higher in the rankings if you take into account their foreign investments. Five years ago, they weren’t even in the top twenty. They’ve been gobbling up real estate in the city and elsewhere in Britain, taking over foreclosed buildings, investing in new ones, and improving some of their older properties.”

  “That sounds expensive,” I said.

  Josh nodded. “Very. A lot of those projects were financed with five- to seven-year financing deals, and many are coming up to be refinanced right now. But there’s no money available. The banks have had their fingers burned and they’re not ladling out money the way they used to.”

  “Which means Montgomery will default on some of their loans?” I asked.

  “Exactly. Some very big loans. It’s not just Montgomery, of course. A bunch of other developers are in the same boat. There’s roughly two hundred and eighty billion pounds’ worth of real estate debt due to mature in the next year to eighteen months and some of the analysts believe that about a third of that could become delinquent. There are a lot of fortunes about to be lost.”

  I sipped my coffee, which tasted burned. “So what does that have to do with Bradley Cohen exactly?”

  Josh ran his finger around the rim of his cup, glanced around the cafe and leaned in towards me. “Montgomery represents nearly fifty percent of Bradley Cohen’s revenues for this year.”

  “That’s crazy, Josh. Alan always said that we’d never be dependent on one or two clients, that we’d always have a mixed portfolio that would protect us from risk if any single company failed to pay us.”

  “I know. That’s what I thought too. But wait until you hear this. It was Rebecca who told them – Alan and Jack – about the state of Montgomery’s finances. She told them completely off the record that the budget Peter Montgomery had given us for the development on the Islington building was outside the range of acceptable risk.”

  “Huh? What does the range of acceptable risk mean?”

  “Well, any property developer has to analyze the total return for each asset. How much rent they can charge, for example, and what it costs to run the asset, with property taxes, utilities, security, whatever. And they try to project the value of the final disposition to make sure that it is a sound investment.”

  “Explain ‘final disposition’?”

  “The ultimate sale of the property. So they calculate how long they should hang on to it and what it will be worth if and when they sell.”

  “Was that part of Rebecca’s job? I knew she was responsible for budgets but didn’t realize there was so much more to it.”

  “I’m sure she worked closely with other managers in the company, but she certainly understood the risk of continuing with the project, both for Montgomery and for Bradley Cohen,” Josh continued. “She was sure they would run out of money before the building could be leased and start to generate revenues. And if Montgomery ran out of money, then we wouldn’t get paid.”

  “So what happened when she told us her concerns? We didn’t pull out of the project?”

  “Apparently not. Did Rebecca say anything to you about any of this?”

  “No, nothing. I would have told you if she had.”

  I thought back. She and I hadn’t talked about work much at all. I’d told her a little about what I did, but she’d never really described her job. She said she liked it, that she enjoyed the challenge. But that was all.

  “And the vast majority choose to ignore scientific fact,” shouted one o
f the students, slamming his fist on his table, pulling me back to the present.

  “So should we be worried?” I asked Josh. “Are our jobs at risk? Alan called me this morning, asking me to come back. He said there’s loads of work to do. Of course, we do have other clients apart from Montgomery, so maybe he meant that I’d be working on some of those.”

  “He told me the same thing,” Josh said. “For now, at least, I think the company is safe and solvent. But losing the Montgomery project would take a serious toll.”

  “Talking of Montgomery,” I said. “He called me.” I told him what he’d said. When I’d finished, Josh looked stunned. “So he was Rebecca’s boyfriend. Did he kill her?”

  “Inspector Clarke thinks not. He has an alibi for the time that Rebecca died.”

  I sipped my coffee. “I wanted him to be the killer. I really dislike him.”

  “I suppose being an awful human being doesn’t make you a criminal.”

  We sat quietly for a minute.

  “Er, how’s the aura thing going?” he asked after a while. “Any more sightings?”

  “Yep. Still there, not that it’s doing me any good.”

  “You saved Aidan,” he said. “That has to count for something.”

  “But not Rebecca and not Nick.”

  “No.”

  I invited Josh to come to Leo’s for dinner, but he said his mum would kill him if he didn’t get back home soon. Finishing our coffee, we linked arms for the walk back to the station. Now he’d been out for a while, his limp seemed more pronounced and he looked tired.

  “When will I see you again?” I asked.

  “Soon. I told Alan I’d come back to work in about a week.”

  The train was at the platform when we reached the station and I was irrationally annoyed. Trains ran late all the time. Why not today, to give me a few more minutes with Josh? I knew he needed to go home, but I was reluctant to let him leave. He made me feel safe, dispelled my doubts, and made me believe that one day I would be able to forget the trauma of Rebecca’s death and the attack at my apartment. But there the train was, with a conductor walking along the platform, slamming the doors closed. Josh got into the nearest carriage and turned back to wave goodbye. I watched until the train disappeared around a bend in the tracks.