Bloody Roses

by Natasha Cooper

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  Contents

  Natasha Cooper

  Dedication

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Natasha Cooper

  Bloody Roses

  Natasha Cooper

  Natasha Cooper lives in London and writes for a variety of newspapers and journals. She was Chairman of the Crime Writer’s Association in 2000/01 and regularly speaks at crime-writing conferences on both sides of the Atlantic. N. J. is the author of the Trish Maguire series and has also written psychological suspense novels as Clare Layton.

  Dedication

  Author’s Note All the characters, institutions, organizations, companies and partnerships mentioned in this novel are wholly imaginary and have no connection with any in the real world. As far as I know there has never been a murder in a London merchant bank. Long may that happy state continue!

  Dedication

  For Sheila and James Turner

  Prologue

  She died as the knife sliced through her trachea. It had already severed the left carotid artery and blood had spurted all over her desk. The offer document she had been checking was covered in blood and so was the Yellow Book that lay beside it. There were horizontal splashes across the flickering screen of her computer and across the long yellow silk dress that hung against the grey partition to her left. Even the roses, which had been pure white, were pied with crimson streaks.

  As she died, she fell, pulling the keyboard of her computer with her. The hem of her slim, knee-length skirt caught on the edge of the chair and so she hung with her head bumping on the floor and her legs sprawled over the arm of the chair. The knife had taken her life and all her dignity, too. She was a thing by then, ugly and frightening.

  Chapter One

  Willow lay with only a sheet covering her. The bed was hard and high, uncomfortable and yet so suitable to the big empty room with its tiled floor and few pieces of massive antique furniture that she forgave it. She had propped her pillows against the heavy walnut bedhead so that she could look out through the window at the hillside opposite.

  The day had been hot and the walls and red-tiled floors of the old house were still warm to the touch. But the grey-green olive trees outside looked as though they were made of icy foil in the moonlight. The leaves moved in the slight wind, changing from white to silver to grey and back to white again. She envied their coolness.

  Something whined in Willow’s ear. She brushed the fly away and then wiped the sweat from each eyebrow in turn with her forefinger. Lying still, she waited for proof that the poison tablet on its little plastic heater could really kill.

  Detaching her attention from the mosquito’s possible and longed-for death for a moment, she looked sideways at the sleeping figure beside her. Tom slept on his back, without a sound, his chest hardly moving as he breathed, as though not only his mind but even his reflexes had been relaxed by the long, slow days in the sun.

  They had both been tired when they arrived at the old farmhouse on the borders of Tuscany and Umbria, but Willow had satisfied her urgent need of sleep more quickly than Tom. They spent their days idling beside the swimming pool, which seemed incongruously modern and sparkling among the bent olive trees, the rough grass and the few tall cypress spires of the so-called garden. Their simple meals consisted of pasta, vegetables, prosciutto crudo or salami and fruit, and they drank the thin local wine.

  Occasionally one or other of them would murmur about driving into Perugia or up to Arezzo for the day, but they rarely stirred from the house and garden. They swam sometimes, and made love often in the hot darkness of their shuttered bedroom, and felt a million miles away from London and the books and bodies that filled their working lives. Tom never talked of his manifold anxieties about cases he had left unfinished, and Willow ignored the complexities of her London existence, in which she lived not only as Willow King, a civil servant taking a six-month sabbatical, but also as ‘Cressida Woodruffe’, a bestselling romantic novelist.

  Sleep began to dissolve the edges of Willow’s mind as she contemplated the leisurely journey across Europe that she and Tom had made to the glorious landscape of low, curved, golden hills and dark cypresses. Thinking of the easily pleasant days they had spent together, she slid down the bed, idly watching the scene in the window change from silver trees to dark-blue, star-speckled sky. Her eyelids closed and reddened pictures of the olive trees formed inside them.

  Her eyes opened as the silence of the room registered in her mind and made its edges firm again. A slight, satisfied smile twitched at the corners of her mouth as she thought of the mosquito’s death. Once more her concentration faded and her eyelids began to droop. Her hot limbs felt heavy as they pressed downwards against the unyielding mattress.

  A new buzzing disturbed her heavy fall into darkness and pulled her back with a jerk. The sound came again, then stopped, sounded once more. Understanding it at last, Willow put one damp, languid hand on the bedside table and reached for the telephone receiver.

  When it was comfortably resting half on her bare shoulder and half on the coarse white pillow, she said carefully:

  ‘Pronto?’

  ‘Willow, is that you?’

  There was a rawness in the urgent English voice that made her concentrate at once. Abandoning her minimal Italian, she said:

  ‘Yes. Richard? You sound very odd. What’s the trouble? It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘I’ve been arrested.’

  ‘What?’

  Willow sat up, the sheet falling away from her naked body. There was some movement beside her but she did not feel it.

  ‘They think I murdered a woman in the office. Christ, Willow, I need help.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ she said, sounding businesslike enough to make Tom sit up too.

  He could not resist watching her as she sat in the moonlight, oblivious of him and of herself. She looked wonderful with her dark-red hair flowing about her pale body, which the sun was never allowed to colour. All the angularity that had once distorted it had gone. She was still slim but there was a new grace about her as though she had become used to herself and knew how to move with her body instead of against it.

  ‘Have you got a lawyer?’ Willow’s voice was serious.

  ‘No, that’s the point. The only ones I know deal with mergers and acquisitions, and sometimes fraud. They’ve no experience of this sort of thing. I need a criminal lawyer. You’ve been involved with murder cases. Tell me who to get.’

>   ‘I’ll have to think, Richard, I…’

  ‘This is my one telephone call. You’re the only person I can think of who can recommend the best man.’

  ‘I will. Calm down and tell me what happened.’

  ‘Her throat was cut. I found her.’

  Richard’s voice sounded choked and the horror in it worried Willow far more than the ludicrous news that he was suspected of murder. Knowing that if he were judged a suicide risk he might not get bail, Willow tried to think what she could do to help.

  ‘Where are you? I’ll get someone to you as soon as I can.’

  ‘The King William Street police station. Willow –’

  ‘Quiet. Don’t worry. This can be sorted out. Don’t say anything to them. Make them give you tea or something and hold on until someone gets there.’

  ‘Willow, I’ve … I’ve got to go.’

  ‘I won’t abandon you. You’ll be all right. Hang on.’

  There was a click on the line and Willow was left clutching the receiver, her mind empty of everything except Richard’s horror. A large, warm hand closed on her wrist and she started.

  ‘Willow?’

  Tom’s reassuring voice sounded confident beside her in the half-darkness. He rolled over, took the telephone receiver out of her hand and leaned still further to replace it on its cradle.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked as he propped himself up against banked-up pillows.

  Willow’s pale-green eyes looked dazed as she tried to focus on his familiar face, darkened by the sun and the whiteness of the pillows to a rich tan.

  ‘Richard Crescent has been arrested for murder,’ she said slowly. ‘There’s been some mistake, but I’ve got to find him a lawyer.’

  ‘The miracles of modern telephones,’ said Tom with a note of caustic in his voice that made Willow’s eyes sharpen and her lips thin. It was odd how easy it was to forget that he was a policeman.

  ‘In the old days a suspect would never have been able to ring beyond London, let alone Tuscany.’ Watching her face, Tom added: ‘Don’t look like that; I’m not taking this lightly.’

  Willow switched on the lamp and saw from the hardness in his dark-eyes that he was telling the exact truth.

  ‘Murder is never a joke,’ he went on. ‘What happened?’

  Willow told him what little she knew, adding: ‘I must find him the best lawyer. What a good thing you’re here, Tom. Who should I get?’

  ‘Do you think he did it?’ he asked, ignoring the ease with which she seemed to have forgotten he was her lover in her need for his police experience.

  Willow got out of bed and walked away. Coming to the foot of the bed to stand with her hands gripping the bedstead, she looked at Tom.

  ‘How can you even ask that?’

  ‘Come on, Willow,’ said Tom gently. ‘I hardly know the man; that’s why I asked you. You do know him. And it’s important: different talents are desirable in lawyers acting for the innocent and the guilty. I can’t recommend anyone unless I know which is more likely.’

  ‘Richard Crescent could not kill anyone,’ said Willow, enunciating each syllable as though she were swearing an oath in court.

  ‘Good. Then I’d suggest a man called Martin Roylandson of Tithe, Kingdome. He’s excellent and very quick to protect the innocent.’

  ‘In other words, loathed by the police,’ said Willow sharply because she was suddenly afraid of what Tom represented.

  He shook his head, running both hands through his thick, dark hair. ‘The last thing the police want to do is go miles down the road of getting together a case against an innocent person. Come back to bed, Will?’

  ‘You don’t really believe that’s always true, do you? After everything we’ve learned recently about the fitting-up and the doctoring of evidence.’ She pushed her hair away from her hot, damp face and then shook her head, trying to speak more kindly.

  ‘I can’t come back to bed. I must get hold of this man. I don’t suppose you’ve got your address book with you?’

  ‘Try Directory Enquiries,’ Tom suggested. ‘Or would you rather I did it for you?’

  Willow closed her eyes for a moment. The question was typical of him; he would never bother to play games just because someone had snapped at him, and he would always help if he could. Knowing that, she could not take advantage of his offer. She shook her head and reached for a towel to wrap round her body and went downstairs to find an Italian telephone directory. Twenty minutes later she was still trying to get hold of the London Directory Enquiries.

  Tom appeared, also wearing a towel, and silently handed her a mug of tea. Regretting the things she had said and the way she had said them, she waited until he had put the mug down beside the telephone and then took his hand and held it against her cheek. With his other hand he stroked her head.

  ‘I know it’s bloody for you,’ he said quietly, ‘to be so far away and unable to help. But if he is innocent he’ll be all right. He may well not get bail – he sounds pretty desperate and they may be allowed to hold him for his own protection – and imprisonment will be frightening for him and humiliating, but it won’t kill him.’

  Willow put the telephone down on her knee and turned in her chair to look up at Tom.

  ‘It’s the fear and the humiliation that make me so sorry for him; it’s not that he and I… I’m not still … He’s just a friend these days.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tom seriously, and then added with a glinting smile that she knew well: ‘After all, you’re here with me.’

  ‘Pronto,’ she said, having seized the squawking telephone. ‘No: British Directory Enquiries.’

  An incomprehensible flow of Italian made her shake her head and put the telephone back in unbearable frustration. Languages had never been among her talents and she knew that Tom’s did not include Italian. She picked up her address book again and flipped through the pages. Half a minute later she had dialled a number and was waiting while it rang in a small Kensington house.

  ‘Hello?’ said a gentle, sleepy voice just in time to stop Willow giving up in despair.

  ‘Emma, is that you? It’s Cressida here. I’m sorry to ring so late, but I need your help badly.’

  ‘Cressida! Golly! I mean, of course. What can I do? I thought you were in Italy.’

  ‘I am. That’s why I need you. Richard Crescent has been arrested for murder.’ There was a gasp and Willow remembered, too late, that Emma Gnatche had always had a schoolgirl crush on Richard.

  ‘I have to get a lawyer to go to the police station to act for him,’ Willow said briskly, because it was too late to wrap up the announcement in some acceptable euphemism. ‘Tom has recommended one called Martin Roylandson of Tithe, Kingdome, but I simply cannot find out how to get his home telephone number from here. Emma, will you take over?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said at once.

  Willow remembered with relief that, although Emma was only a year out of school and still planning to go to university, she had spent several months working for a Member of Parliament and was said to be a reasonably competent secretary. She could be relied on to find the lawyer.

  ‘I’ll get him somehow and go and see Richard, too, if they’ll let me,’ Emma went on.

  ‘I knew I could count on you, Emma. Will you keep me posted?’

  Willow read the telephone number of the farmhouse and then, having listened to renewed assurances from Emma, she rang off.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, sitting staring at the telephone, ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep. You go back to bed and I’ll sit and brood for a while.’

  Instead of obeying he picked up her mug of tea and his own.

  ‘Don’t be a clot. I’m not leaving you to sit through this alone. Come and drink your tea outside. It’ll be blissfully cool.’

  With unnatural obedience, Willow stood up and followed him out through the heavy oak doors to sit at the long, grey marble table and drink her English tea.

  The cicadas shrilled and crackled and small b
ats swooped down to pick flies off the surface of the blue swimming pool. As a cloud shut out the moon, Willow asked Tom what would be happening to Richard. Quietly he explained the details of police procedure, describing the sort of cell in which Richard would be spending the night and what would happen to him the following day.

  Two hours later they went back to bed and eventually even Willow slept.

  The next morning Willow could hardly bear to leave the house, even to breakfast at the table under the vines, in case Emma should telephone. Tom persuaded her that if they left the shutters open the telephone’s discreet buzz would reach as far as the terrace.

  The heat was already drying the dew from the grass round the pool and burning the thin white mist from the valley as they shared a pot of strong coffee and toasted rolls spread with fig jam. Willow looked across to the terraces of olive trees with regret. The holiday, on which she had embarked with such reservations and yet found to be so satisfying, was over. Tom had proved to be the most undemanding and at the same time most stimulating companion she had ever known. To Willow’s surprise neither their isolation from the rest of the world nor their unwonted proximity had troubled her.

  But Richard Crescent was in a police cell, afraid and facing a murder charge. Even though he had yielded his place in her life to Tom many months ago, Richard mattered to Willow and she could not sit by and watch him suffer.

  Tom sat, drinking the bitter dregs of his coffee and watching her across the marble table. Some sun flickered through the vine-leaf canopy and fell on her face. She was so intent on her thoughts that her eyelids never blinked even when a small spider lowered itself on an invisible filament just in front of her face. Tom leaned across to remove it to a safer distance.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Only a spider, Will. It’s absurd to say “don’t worry”, but Richard won’t benefit from your misery.’

  Willow was too intelligent to protest at that piece of common sense and an appreciative smile did relax her lips for a moment.