by Ann Granger
Ganesh frowned and peered into the distance. ‘What are they doing? Are they looking for something?’
The couple in front of us were still poking about in the long grass and bushes on the opposite side of the path to the stone steps. As I watched, Ned straightened up, the morning sunlight setting fire to his gingery-blond hair. He put his hands on his hips and said something to Lisa, shaking his head.
Lisa replied and they both resumed their search, Ned in a desultory manner which suggested his heart wasn’t in it.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re looking for something and I know what it is. Come on.’
We left the cover of the trees and walked towards the searching couple. They were so intent on what they were doing that neither of them noticed us until we were upon them. Then Ned saw us and straightened up again. He looked wary but that turned to surprise when he saw me. His gaze flickered to Ganesh and the wariness returned to his expression. He looked back at me again and this time there was a familiar hostility in his face.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked sulkily. ‘Who’s that?’ He pointed at Ganesh.
‘Very rude,’ I reproved him. ‘May I introduce Ganesh Patel, who is a friend of mine from London.’
Ned looked even sulkier and mumbled, ‘Hi.’
Lisa had heard our voices and spun round. She didn’t come forward to meet us but stood a little way off, glowering defiantly. She wore blue jeans and yet another of those loosely knitted sweaters she favoured, this one in pale lemon with embroidered daisies. She must have had a cupboard full of them. Her hair was attractively tousled and tumbled to her shoulders. The grim look on her face meant she didn’t look nearly so pretty as usual but she was still a stunner. She was holding something in her hand: a little cloth bag of the sort dance students carry their pumps to ballet class in. The bag was clearly empty, collapsed like a burst balloon.
‘Hello, Lisa,’ I called to her. ‘I won’t ask what you’re doing because I know.’
At that she did start to walk towards me. She was a quick thinker and by the time she’d reached us she’d rearranged her features into a pleasant smile. She beamed warmly at Ganesh and said, ‘Hi! Nice to meet you.’
‘Hello,’ mumbled Ganesh and looked all daft.
Lisa obviously considered that any problem likely to be posed by Ganesh had been defused and turned her attention to me. ‘We thought, Ned and I,’ she said, ‘that we’d investigate Ivo’s death. If we came down here, we might find some clues, right, Ned?’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Ned obediently.
I managed not to hiss in exasperation. What was it with men? I felt myself bristle and when I spoke I knew I sounded churlish. ‘What would you do if you found any clues?’ I asked.
Ganesh glanced at me and Lisa blinked. ‘Tell the police, I suppose. Or tell you and then you could tell the police because you’ve already been questioned by them.’
Ouch! ‘I don’t think you’re looking for clues,’ I said. ‘I think you’re looking for something quite specific. I expect your dad is missing his pet.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, come on, yes, you do. You’re looking for Arthur, the grass snake. I’ve told Ganesh about that. Your father said it was missing from the garden when I saw him last. You’d like to find the creature and take it back, wouldn’t you?’
‘Why,’ demanded Lisa, reddening, ‘should Arthur be here? You’re nuts.’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’ve been a bit slow to work it out, I admit that. But now I have. You brought Arthur here with you, probably in that little bag you’re holding, early on the morning Ivo died. You had originally arranged to meet me here. But then Ivo got in touch with you and you arranged to meet him here too, but earlier. You were very scared of him, weren’t you, Lisa? I’m not surprised. He was a scary sort of bloke. But there was something he was scared of himself, really terrified, wasn’t there? Snakes.’
‘How would I know?’ Lisa snapped, her eyes sparkling with anger.
‘You knew because you were at the club the morning an exotic dancer turned up to audition, bringing along a python as part of her act. Ivo must have really freaked out. You saw how scared he was of reptiles, really frightened. Not just an ordinary fright but something much more, a phobia. Since then one other person had told me that Ivo was funny about animals. Even Vera told me he didn’t want to go back to Croatia because it would mean working on the farm with his parents. Perhaps it was just the hard work he didn’t fancy, but perhaps it was because it meant handling the livestock. He didn’t like being around any of them, but snakes were really the things he couldn’t stand.’
I pointed at the bag. ‘It was a good idea to bring Arthur with you and hold him in your hands while talking to Ivo. I bet that made Ivo keep his distance. How did you get him to fall in the river? Just walk towards him holding out the grass snake? Just making him back off until he lost his footing?’
Ned, who had been listening with increasing unease, now burst into speech, his face red. ‘Look here, Lisa didn’t mean any harm. She was frightened of the bloke. That’s why she brought the snake with her, like you say. If she’d asked me, I’d have come with her. But she thought she could manage it if she had something Ivo was so frightened of.’
Well, well, with friends like Ned, as the saying goes, Lisa didn’t need enemies.
She turned on him savagely. ‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘Shut up, you idiot! She was just guessing I was here. She couldn’t know! Now she does!’
Poor Ned looked stricken. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘But you didn’t mean any harm, Lisa, did you? I keep telling you, if you just go to the police . . .’ He turned back to us. ‘She didn’t know he’d drown!’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, she wouldn’t have left him to drown! I keep telling her the police would understand that.’
‘Will you just shut up?’ she yelled again and he fell silent.
Too late, he seemed to realise the extent of the harm he’d done. It almost made me want to help him out; he looked both miserable and confused. He was an idiot but he’d meant well. I suppose meaning well is an excuse of sorts. My original diagnosis that he wasn’t too bright was confirmed, however, by his words. The police would be unlikely to take the charitable view of Lisa’s actions he had suggested. But stupidity isn’t a crime. Lisa would argue she was stupid to leave Ivo in the river threshing about. But that’s not what happened, I thought, with growing conviction.
‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘we can all go somewhere quiet and discuss this.’
‘I’ve got nothing to discuss with you,’ she told me in a small tight voice. ‘All you’ve done is cause trouble for me. You’re just Mickey’s mouthpiece. I’ve told Mickey I want nothing more to do with him and I’m telling you now that I want nothing more to do with you. Stay away from me and from my family.’
‘She’s got a point,’ said Ned, ever loyal. But he said it rather nervously because now he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.
I ignored him and held Lisa’s gaze. ‘But I’ve got something you want,’ I said and tapped my breast pocket.
The bright pink flush drained from her face as she grasped my meaning.
‘You got it?’ she whispered and ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and then stuck out her hand. ‘Give it to me!’ Her voice rose to an unattractive squawk.
‘Manners, manners,’ I said. ‘I’m a woman of my word. We made a bargain, you and I, remember? You phoned Allerton and I went to London for you. If anyone here has the right to be tired of anyone else, it’s me. I’m tired of you and your boyfriend - both your boyfriends . . .’ I nodded to include Ned. ‘I’m tired of running errands for others. But I said I’d do it, and I did. Yes, I’ve got it.’
‘What’s she got of yours?’ asked poor old Ned, who really was out of the loop.
‘Passport,’ said Ganesh briefly. He’d been standing by as observer, looking from Lisa to Ned and back again. Over the last few minute
s he’d been showing signs of impatience and had decided to cut to the chase.
‘Why has she got your passport?’ Ned turned to Lisa, bewilderment written all over his bovine countenance.
‘You don’t tell the poor guy anything, do you?’ I said. ‘Well, you told him you brought Arthur here because you needed him to come and help you hunt for the snake. I’m not handing over the passport, Lisa, until we’ve got a few things sorted out.’
‘You’ve got to give me the passport!’ she snapped. ‘It’s mine!’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘if you read the notes inside the front cover, you’ll see it’s the property of Her Majesty’s Government. ’
‘Well, you aren’t the bloody government!’ she shouted. ‘Hand it over!’ She thrust out her open palm again.
I just smiled at her.
She bit her lip and scowled at me but she had realised she wasn’t in a position to call the shots. Her manner had become more placatory. ‘Come on, Fran. What’s it to you?’
Ned was catching up and realising there were a few things he wanted to know. ‘Perhaps we should all talk it through without getting hot and bothered,’ he said. ‘We can go to my flat. I’ve got my car. It’s parked right near here.’
Lisa looked furious but she needed to keep Ned on side. ‘I’ll go if you’ll give me my passport afterwards,’ she said.
‘No deals,’ I told her. ‘I’ve made enough of them. I told you, I’m tired of it. Now we do things my way.’
Her face had turned a deathly white. ‘You can’t do this to me,’ she said very quietly and viciously.
‘Whatever I do to you,’ I told her equally quietly, ‘it’s nothing compared with what you did to Ivo.’
I think she knew then that I really had worked it out. Her blue eyes seemed to have changed colour, becoming dark fathomless pits. She turned aside and began to walk across the grass towards the exit. We followed her.
Ned’s flat was the first floor of the house next door to the Stallards in Summertown. It was at that front window I’d first noticed him, or rather noticed the curtain twitch which told me someone had seen me at the house next door. It seemed an age ago but it was only a week.
‘I don’t want my mum to see you,’ said Lisa, as we got out of Ned’s battered old car. ‘Dad’s not well. So make it quick, right?’
She scurried from the car to the front door and we tumbled after her in a disorderly gaggle.
‘Hurry up!’ she snapped at Ned as he fumbled for the key. ‘Let’s get inside!’
We climbed the stairs to the first floor. It wasn’t a bad flat, quite roomy. But it wasn’t a patch on the pad in St John’s Wood where Lisa had been installed by the lovesick Mickey Allerton.
Ned offered to make coffee, which we all declined. He looked relieved. We sat facing one another in two pairs, Ganesh and me against Ned and Lisa. The flat was furnished very much in the manner of a student let with odd furniture. It even had posters on the walls instead of pictures. Lisa took the only easy chair as of her right and lay back in it looking relaxed although her eyes were still dark and predatory.
I perched on a straight-backed dining chair of Edwardian vintage which must have been picked up in a junk shop. Ganesh got the only other available seat, a beanbag. He had to lower himself practically to floor level where he looked very uncomfortable with his knees stuck up in the air. That being the sum total of seating places, Ned stood behind Lisa’s easy chair and rested his arms on the back of it so that he hovered protectively over her.
‘Just tell her what happened, Lisa,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. The guy came down from London to make her go back,’ he explained to us. ‘She didn’t want to go. She still doesn’t. Why should she?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t have to. Besides, she’s got a job lined up, working on a cruise ship, right, Lisa? That’s why she wants the passport.’
‘Right,’ said Lisa.
Ned looked down at her. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’ There was a note of bewilderment in his voice. I felt sorry for him. I had an idea his world was about to collapse.
‘I was going to,’ she said, glancing briefly up at his face. ‘I didn’t get a chance.’ She looked away from him quickly. Perhaps she also had an inkling of what the truth would do to him and even a twinge of conscience.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told Ned. ‘It isn’t true, anyway. There’s no cruise ship, no job dancing. She just wants to get out of the country and lie low somewhere.’
Lisa then lost her cool sufficiently to address me in a manner that was extremely personal and indecent. Ned looked amazed, never having heard the like from her before, probably. Ganesh, in the depths of his beanbag, looked deeply disapproving.
‘You’re losing it, Lisa,’ I said. ‘It’s all coming apart. You had it all set up nicely. But Mickey started to get possessive, didn’t he? And his wife took a dislike to you. I met Julie, by the way. She’s awfully cross with you. I think she’s having the locks on the flat changed today. You might not be able to get back in.’
‘The cow!’ said Lisa.
I wondered whether to tell her Julie had chopped up all Lisa’s designer wear but decided to withhold that detail for the time being.
‘She’s divorcing Mickey,’ I said, ‘and she wants the flat.’
‘I didn’t mean him to leave his wife!’ she snapped. ‘When he did it was a nuisance but not too much of a problem for me because he moved into a flat he’s got over the club and lived there. But then he started bringing his stuff over to my place and staying with me. I didn’t want him around all the time!’
‘Mickey’s the jealous type,’ I explained to Ned.
‘What do you mean, he’s been staying with you?’ demanded Ned of Lisa. All this had left him far behind.
‘She’s his mistress,’ I said. ‘I think that’s the traditional term for it. And just like the good old days, Mickey installed his mistress in a plush flat in St John’s Wood. Lisa’s circumstances had improved a lot since you visited her in that rented room in Rotherhithe. She’s been living in style.’
‘But you only worked for him as a dancer, Lisa,’ Ned said wonderingly, still unable to grasp the fact that she had been lying to him all along, and as yet he didn’t know the half of it.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Lisa brutally to him. ‘I had to have a stronger reason than that for leaving! The whole thing was getting so complicated! He started talking about us getting married and then we could all go to Spain—’ She broke off, but too late, and stared at me aghast.
‘All?’ I said, raising my eyebrows. ‘Just you and Mickey would make it “both”, wouldn’t it? But baby makes three, doesn’t it?’
‘Baby?’ gasped Ned.
‘How do you know?’ Lisa demanded. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles were white against the stretched skin the way they had been when I told her of Ivo’s death. But this time she wasn’t acting.
‘I saw the remains of the pregnancy testing kit box in your bathroom. And I knew there had to be a really good reason why you ran away like that, especially from all that luxury. Is that why you wear all those baggy knitted sweaters? You don’t have the trim waistline you had a few weeks ago?’
There was a fraught silence. Ned was shaking his head from side to side as if he’d got something lodged in his ear.
‘Harry the doorman’s wife, Cheryl, put that idea in my head,’ I explained to Lisa. ‘When she talked to me about dancers having good figures.’
Lisa said quietly but with extraordinary venom, ‘I don’t have to discuss it with you, Fran, or with anyone else. Please give me my passport. I’ve booked a seat on a flight this evening. Yes, I do want to get away from Mickey.’
‘And from the police,’ I said. ‘You killed him, Lisa, didn’t you? You killed Ivo.’
Ned burst out, ‘No! How could she? You saw him. He was a big fellow. She couldn’t harm him. She only . . .’ but then fell silent. ‘You didn’t, did you, Lisa?’ he asked.
He sounded ready to burst into tears.
‘Of course not,’ said Lisa impatiently. ‘He fell in the river. I didn’t know he’d drown. My passport, please, Fran.’ She got to her feet and held out her hand.
‘Yes,’ said Ned, rallying and staying loyal to the last. ‘If it is her passport, Fran, you ought to hand it over.’
‘In good time. First let’s all go and see a friend of mine here in Oxford,’ I said. ‘Her name is Hayley Pereira and she’s a detective-sergeant . . .’
I didn’t get to finish. Lisa threw herself at me. She caught me unawares, hitting me foursquare like a battering ram. My chair toppled backwards and I crashed to the floor, Lisa on top of me. She was scrabbling at my jacket pocket, trying to tear it open and extract the passport. I was winded by the fall and struggled to fend her off. She was fit and very strong. Ganesh was struggling up from his beanbag to come to my aid but Ned darted forward and pushed him back, holding him down.