‘Richard Crescent, the bugger who did it.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Willow. It was a feeble comment, but it was enough to satisfy Beeking. ‘I don’t understand, though, did you go straight to the dance from your meeting?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘It’s silly, I know,’ said Willow shaking her head, ‘but I just remember Tracy’s telling me that the party was black tie. Surely you weren’t wearing a dinner jacket in your meeting?’
‘Heavens, no,’ said Beeking with a laugh. ‘No. Stedington and I decided since we were so late that we simply hadn’t time to go home and change. We went as we were.’
‘Oh, I see. You hadn’t brought evening clothes to the office?’
He shook his head. ‘Only people like Sarah who lived out in the sticks did that.’
There were a lot more questions that Willow wanted to ask, but she did not want to risk arousing any suspicions of her motives and so she turned the conversation back to the training of secretaries and heard yet more stories of Tracy’s incompetence.
Beeking eventually swallowed the last of his toast and drained his coffee cup.
‘I must go, but this has been a useful meeting. I’d like to see a copy of your report; perhaps it would help if I went through the draft with you.’
Willow raised her eyebrows.
‘That’s a charming offer,’ she said with patent insincerity, ‘but our practice is to show the reports only to those who commission them. I’m sure a copy will reach you in due course. Thank you for your suggestions.’
He strode out of the room and there was a tightness about his shoulders and his legs that suggested he was angry. Willow watched him stop for a moment by the door and say something to Maeve that made her smile and blush.
Willow slowly ate the rest of her rolls, bought herself a second pot of coffee and drank it as she stared out of the window towards the river. Beeking was one of the few people she had met – apart from the police – who appeared to be convinced of Richard’s guilt. He was also the only person apart from Clara Biggleigh-Clart whom she would willingly have suspected, and he seemed the likelier murderer of the two.
Taking the lift back to the Corporate Finance floor, Willow considered Beeking. It was possible that all his unattractive habits might have had their origin in his lowly position within the department. His patronage of the waitress, his contempt for the secretaries, his constituting himself as Sarah’s possibly unwanted champion, and even his ready acceptance of Richard’s guilt might all have been tools to shore up his subsiding self-esteem.
On the other hand, Willow thought as she walked out of the lift and rang the bell at the doors of the Corporate Finance Department, many of his characteristics fitted the basic profile of a certain type of murderer. It was only a few months since she had read most of the latest works on serial killers. The fear that had kept her from sleeping properly returned with full force.
The doors began to move in front of her and Beeking stood there with his charming smile in place.
‘Thank you,’ said Willow, unclamping her teeth. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you again.’
‘We’re all alone,’ he said, still smiling. ‘The others rarely get here as early as this.’ He was standing with one hand on the right half of the double doors, blocking her way.
‘What a good opportunity to get some work done in peace,’ she said, forcing herself forwards. He moved just enough for her to pass without touching him. ‘How you all manage to concentrate with telephones ringing and people talking all round you, I can’t think.’
She set off towards her own desk and felt him following her.
‘Are you sure I can’t help with your report?’ he said, leaning over the back of her chair.
‘No, no. Really. Thank you. I must get on.’ He did not move away from the chair and Willow could not force herself to sit in it while he had his hands on the back of it. The thought of Sarah’s death filled her mind. Beeking’s hands were very white and a little pudgy. Had one of them twisted in Sarah’s long, dark hair and forced back her head while the other drew a knife across her throat?
‘Are you all right? You look awfully pale.’
At the sound of his voice. Willow brushed a hand across her forehead and wiped away the sweat. She swallowed, feeling her Adam’s apple swelling and blocking her windpipe.
The electronically locked doors parted with their usual squeak and Willow heard the sound of two pairs of heavy shoes thudding over the carpet. Her throat unblocked itself and she began to breathe again.
‘I think I must have swallowed a crumb at breakfast,’ she said. ‘My throat doesn’t feel right at all.’
‘Poor you,’ said Beeking, relaxing his hands on the chair back. ‘I’ll fetch you a glass of water. Sit down and rest.’
Vowing that she would never drink anything he produced, Willow swallowed again and nodded. He disappeared and she sat down, her head balanced on her right hand, wondering whether she ought to pass her suspicions of Beeking on to Jane Moreby. The young banker who had the carrel next to Willow’s gave her a cheerful greeting as he whisked his chair out with one foot and slung his briefcase on his desk.
A moment later his jacket was adorning the back of his chair, he had switched on his screen and was settling down to work. Willow waited for Beeking and his glass of water. When it came she thanked him with as much politeness as she could summon up and waited until he had disappeared before pouring the water into the nearest huge, fan-leaved castor-oil plant.
It was some time before she could make herself start her own work, but eventually the possibility that she had made Beeking suspicious forced her to switch on her computer and type in her password in case anyone had sent her confidential messages. There was one from the chief executive himself.
I warned you [Willow read] that I would stop you at once if I felt you were exceeding your brief. I have to say that I think your interrogation of my wife was outrageous and underhand. If you wanted to talk to her it would have been more honest – not to speak of more polite – if you had asked me to arrange it.
I have considered terminating our agreement, but am prepared to extend it provided that I have your assurance that there will be no more similar escapades. If you wish to speak to anyone not in the bank’s employment, you must consult me or Stedington first.
Please give me your assurance by return.
Willow read the message twice before she was prepared to concede that Biggles might have a point. It would have been much simpler – as well as more economical – to have asked him to fix a meeting for her. Wondering whether she was addicted to secrecy for its own sake, Willow typed in a message of apology and sent it off. That done, she called up on to the screen the notes she had made about the bank’s training needs.
Telling herself that she was in no danger at all unless she was stupid enough to allow herself to be alone with any of her suspects again, Willow worked for the rest of the morning. She read through those of the completed questionnaires that had been returned to her to design a series of lectures, workshops, role-playing exercises and study papers for the various levels of staff in the Corporate Finance Department.
In between tapping her suggestions into the keyboard she kept thinking of Sarah Allfarthing and the possibility that she might have a lover outside the bank.
About to write down all that she had been told so that she could work out where to go in search of proof. Willow caught a glimpse of the man on her right swinging his legs up on his desk and turning to grin at her. She smiled back and pushed her chair back so that she could ask about his views of the bank’s training needs as a prelude to getting his views on the dead woman’s character.
He had been on one negotiating course already, he told her, and had plenty to say about its failings, but he was less articulate about the kind of training he thought might be useful. After some tactful probing Willow realized that he found it hard to admit to any lack in himself or his competence, so she asked him
to tell her about the difficulties that the most junior staff had when they first joined the department. That seemed to be easier and he gave her some quite useful information.
When she asked him about Sarah Allfarthing, she was surprised to see a wide smile spreading across his face.
‘She was lovely,’ he said just as the telephone on Willow’s desk began to ring. ‘It was the vilest thing … quite incomprehensible. I say, hadn’t you better answer that? It might be Biggles.’
Willow picked up the receiver and heard one of the receptionists telling her that James Certes was awaiting her in the lobby.
‘I must go,’ she said to the young banker, ‘but it’s been very useful talking to you. Perhaps we could continue later?’
‘Delighted – unless a deal gets in the way.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Willow as she got up and picked up her linen jacket. ‘How are deals allocated? It seems to me that some of you get far more than your fair share of the work.’
‘Chance, really, I suppose. And how we’ve performed before. And whether the client has asked for us. Or,’ he added with a humorous grimace, ‘whether the client has particularly asked not to have us.’
‘Do you think that the system could be improved?’
‘I’m sure it could be.’
‘Then do you think you could give me a rundown of the criteria that are used now and the ones that you think would be more useful? That would be a great help.’
‘Sure,’ he said, looking a bit surprised. Willow reminded herself that she was a training, not a management, consultant and left him. As she waited for the lift, she tried to remember what it was that she had wanted to ask James Certes, but the effect of her encounters with William Beeking seemed to have removed her capacity to think sensibly about anything except the safe anodyne of her cover job. At least, she told herself bracingly, that might help to convince Certes.
He got out of the dark-red bucket chair as she eventually emerged from a lift full of chattering people and stood, hand outstretched. Willow walked forwards, thinking again how unlike a City solicitor he looked with his delicate face and his fashionable suit. As they met, she shook his hand, and pushed the memory of William Beeking’s very different hands out of her mind.
‘Where would you like to eat?’ Willow asked. ‘I haven’t booked anywhere, but as it’s quite early we ought not to have difficulty getting a table.’
‘There’s a champagne bar round the corner where I sometimes used to go with poor Sarah Allfarthing,’ he said. ‘It’s pleasant and quick.’
‘Fine. Lead on.’
They walked abreast, falling into single file when builders’ scaffolding or other pedestrians demanded it, making stilted conversation when they could, and it was not until they were sitting side by side in the cool dimness of the bar watching a waiter open a remarkably expensive bottle of champagne that Certes asked Willow how he could help her.
The cork eased itself out of the dark-green neck of the bottle, hardly assisted at all by the waiter’s deft fingers, and the wine hissed as it rose.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ said Certes as he tasted it.
Willow thought that since it was she who was paying for the lunch and she who had selected the champagne, it ought to be she who tasted it.
‘Not bad,’ she said when she eventually had the chance. She was tempted to go through the whole performance of looking, smelling and rinsing her teeth with the wine, but she resisted.
‘I was hoping,’ she went on with a sweet smile, ‘that you could tell me something about the performance of the bank’s corporate financiers from the point of view of your clients. I have interviewed almost everyone within the department and have a fairly clear idea of what needs to be done; your views would be very helpful.’
Certes laughed and held his glass up to the light, watching the bubbles rise and bounce as they hit the surface.
‘From the clients’point of view they should be quicker, cheaper, less prone to error, vanity and other human defects.’
‘Naturally,’ said Willow, managing to laugh with him. ‘I suspect that the same could be said of anyone in any field of expertise – even the law, perhaps. Have you never made a mistake? Not even a teeny-weeny one?’
‘That sounds unnecessarily frivolous,’ said Certes as repressively as though he had suddenly lost his sense of humour.
‘Sorry.’ Willow was surprised but determined to be polite. ‘They all carry on at the bank as though life was a tremendous joke and I seem to have caught the habit.’
‘Well, they oughtn’t to. A most remarkable woman was killed there and they should bloody well show a bit more respect.’
‘I think they’re using frivolity as a way to deal with the horror of what happened to her. They all speak of her with tremendous respect – and affection.’
Certes drank a large mouthful of champagne. When it had gone down his throat he apologized.
‘I suppose it’s because I hold them all responsible,’ he said with a paradoxically sweet smile, ‘that I get so worked up.’
‘Responsible? How?’
Certes shrugged and Willow saw the end of his real shoulders at least three inches inside the line of the shoulderpads in his jacket.
‘They gave her a very hard time when she first went there and because of it made her into something they couldn’t handle. Richard Crescent may have killed her, but it could have been almost any of them.’
‘I find that almost impossible to believe,’ said Willow, staring down at the rising bubbles in her glass. ‘There are women in merchant banks all over London and none of them has been killed. Why should Sarah Allfarthing have been any different?’
She looked up and saw the beautiful eyes narrow into almond shapes.
‘They hated Biggleigh-Clart for forcing her on them and then hated themselves for falling under her spell; and so they took it out on her. If she hadn’t been the only woman or if she’d been less alluring and unattainable, things might have been different.’ He drank some more champagne and drew one of the two menus towards him. ‘Why are you so interested?’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’ said Willow, reaching for the other menu. ‘It’s not prurience – at least I hope not – but I’ve been sitting there at her desk day after day, surrounded by people who talk about her, and I haven’t been able to ignore it. I don’t think anyone would be able to dismiss it. I’ve been feeling … well, a lot of sympathy for her.’
‘I think you’d have liked her,’ said Certes, looking at Willow over the top of his menu. She was surprised and showed it.
‘You’ve something of the same mixture of glamour and toughness,’ he said, adding slowly: ‘however hard you try to hide it.’
Willow tried to concentrate on the menu and ignore the suggestion implicit in what he had just said. Eventually she chose another mixed smoked-fish salad and hoped that it would be better than the one she had had in the cocktail bar.
‘By the way,’ she said when the waiter had taken their order, ‘before we get down to business, will you tell me one more thing about the dead woman?’
There was a pause.
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just that I’ve been wondering how she managed to persuade you to offer a job to that tiresome secretary in her department.’ Willow had the impression that she had given Certes a shock, but he smiled encouragingly and so she went on: ‘Mrs Allfarthing must have told you about the things the girl does: the confidential letters sent out in the wrong envelopes, the mislaid telephone messages, and all the rest.’
Certes’s smile became impish and he suddenly looked very pleased with himself.
‘Oh, she did. Poor Sarah: that girl was one of the many crosses she had to bear at the bank; and it was almost the only one I could do anything about. It was my idea.’
‘Your idea?’
‘Yes. Oh, good, here’s the food.’
The waiter laid down two plates of well-arranged salad, each with generous slices of smok
ed salmon, eel and halibut. Willow was relieved that her judgement had not deserted her. When the waiter offered them horseradish sauce, she saw that it was the authentic version of whipped cream into which fresh horseradish root had been grated.
‘You were going to tell me about your idea,’ Willow said as soon as the waiter had gone. Certes laughed. It was a pleasant sound and Willow could not help smiling at him.
‘You’ve Sarah’s tenacity, too. The two of you would have got on well. It was a day rather like this. We were lunching and I could see that she was almost beside herself with rage. I asked why and eventually she told me about something Tracy had done that was catastrophically crass even for her.
‘I exploded. It was obvious that she should be sacked. Sarah said bitterly that she had tried to get her out but that Tracy had been there too long for it to be possible without going through all the performance of giving her three written warnings and monitoring her performance and explaining exactly where she fell short. No one Sarah talked to was prepared to bite the bullet and go through with it and she could not do it on her own.’
‘And so you offered her a job? Knowing –’
‘Wake up, Miss King,’ he said, taking a huge bite of smoked eel. Willow had to wait while he chewed and swallowed. ‘At Blenkort & Wilson she’d be on probation; we could throw her out at no notice the moment she did anything wrong at all. And it was quite safe; from all Sarah had said over the years I knew that Tracy would do something wrong within a few days. All it would cost us would be her salary for a few weeks. Cheap, really, as part of practice development.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Practice development. If we made Sarah properly grateful, she’d recommend us to clients of hers who needed lawyers. Simple.’
Battling with her distaste for the story and a rather large bone that had got left in the smoked eel, Willow asked whether Sarah Allfarthing had accepted the plan at once.
‘Oh, no,’ said Certes, picking the champagne bottle, dripping, out of the ice bucket at his side and refilling both their glasses. He grinned. ‘She was far too straight. But I brought her round in the end. I owed it to her.’
Bloody Roses Page 23