Sour Grapes

by Natasha Cooper

  Willow

  PS Tedsmore suggested that it would be worth speaking to Lutterworth’s secretary. That seems a good idea, and I have a feeling that you’d get much more out of her than I would. You must be much nearer her age for one thing. Will you have a crack at her or would you like me to? W.

  Chapter Eleven

  Emma was going through Lutterworth’s polygraph results again. The charts still made no sense. He was only eight months from his automatic release date and yet he was still trying to make a stranger like her believe that he was innocent. At the same time he was displaying reactions that undoubtedly showed signs of guilt. There had to be a reason, and she was determined to find it. Her doctorate might depend on her success with Lutterworth, but there were other, perhaps even more important, things that hung on it, too.

  His solicitor had written to say that in spite of his client’s instructions he could not send Emma tapes of the interview with Podley and his sidekick because they had been mislaid, but he did enclose a photocopy of the transcript. With that, the records of the trial, her own notes, and everything Willow had discovered, Emma had become acquainted with a great deal of what had happened on the night of his arrest—but there were still questions she could not answer.

  When Jag arrived at her room for a brainstorming session, he kissed her with ego-boosting relish, accepted a mug of tea on the grounds that it was too early for anything from the chillybin, and told her that he was at her disposal.

  ‘Good,’ said Emma, gesturing to the space she had cleared for him on the little sofa.

  She herself sat with her legs tucked up under her on the neatly made bed, with the text of the interview to her left, the trial transcript to her right and her own polygraph sheets and list of questions in front of her.

  ‘OK, shoot,’ he said, looking as though he enjoyed the picture of her efficiency.

  ‘I think I told you that when I first met Lutterworth I rather liked him,’ she began.

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Jag said, nodding. ‘So?’

  ‘And then at intervals during the interview, I found him…well, creepy really and rather worrying, but then again, at the end, I felt as though I’d done him an injustice and that perhaps he was likable after all. I’ve been wondering which of my reactions I can trust. You see it’s occurred to me that he could have been trying to suppress the creepiness in order to make me like him so that I’d accept his claims of innocence.’ She paused and looked at Jag, trying to read his expression. When he did not give her any clues, she added, ‘Am I off the wall here or d’you think it’s possible?’

  ‘It’s possible. Likely even. But I doubt if it would have been a wholly conscious intention.’ Jag waited for a moment, as though testing what he wanted to say for acceptability. When he started to speak again he showed none of his usual breezy humour: ‘But you mustn’t forget, Emma, that in some ways he is just your type and so you might not have needed any manipulation to make you respond favourably.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Emma looked at Jag’s long legs, straggling curly black hair and general bigness. She thought of the slight, grey-faced, much older man in prison. ‘He doesn’t look anything like any of the men I’ve ever fancied or had anything to do with. Except that he’s got dark hair, I suppose. Come to think of it, none of them have been fair.’

  Apart from his black hair, Jag was nothing like any of the others either. Emma could not decide whether that was a good sign or not.

  ‘I don’t mean physically,’ he said with a hint of impatience. ‘But you do have quite a penchant for outsiders.’

  ‘A penchant, eh? That doesn’t seem a likely word for a chillybin-kitchen-whizz-talking New Zealander,’ said Emma, trying to make a joke as she usually did when she felt uncomfortable.

  ‘Come on, Sunshine,’ he said less gently still. ‘You must have noticed that you go for people who don’t fit in.’

  Emma shook her head. Her expression was stubborn and her big blue eyes looked almost cold. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘It seems pretty clear to me, as a psychologist you understand, that because of your alienation from your own family, you are drawn to other people who are strangers within their group.’ Looking at her stiffening face, he added, ‘It’s no criticism. It’s just a point.’

  Emma was surprised, both by Jag’s idea and by the formality of its expression, but she was affronted, too, which shocked her. She did not approve of people who took offence. She could not think of anything to say.

  Breathing evenly and still not smiling or letting her see any of his funniness or the seductive, unlikely tenderness he sometimes showed her, Jag went steadily on.

  ‘There’s me, an obvious foreigner who knows almost no one here and was more than lonely before I found you. Then there’s your Willow—’

  ‘She’s no stranger,’ said Emma quickly. ‘She’s as rooted as anything; successful and famous, too. And popular. She’s not in the least lonely or any kind of outsider. She adores Tom and Lucinda and is more than adored by them. She—’

  ‘Yeah. That’s all true—now. But you told me that when you first knew her she was pretending to be someone completely different.’

  ‘So what? She had to hide her novels and her money while she was still working in the civil service. They wouldn’t have liked it at all if they’d known what she was doing and how much she was earning from it. They’d probably have stopped taking her seriously, which would have made her job intolerable.’

  ‘Have you never thought that she might have wanted to disguise herself because she didn’t trust anyone else to value her real character?’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Emma, trying to be more interested than outraged and not succeeding.

  ‘So now perhaps there’s Lutterworth, too,’ said Jag, letting a little of his usual self escape around the edges of his careful severity. ‘As you said, he’s a most unlikely habitant of a dispersal prison, quite different from all the others you’ve seen. He comes from a world you’d easily recognise, he’s reasonably attractive, intelligent, polite, pleasant, and you know—or assume—that he’s feeling lonely and isolated in the new one he’s trapped in, and he’s probably being bullied. You were attracted to him. It’s not so surprising.’

  ‘I do vaguely see what you’re getting at,’ Emma said, trying to get rid of the sense of insult. She was not going to be blinkered to new experiences or strange ideas if she could possibly help it. ‘But I’m not sure it’s a valid point.’

  ‘Maybe not. But it’s worth thinking about. As I said, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, even if it’s true.’

  ‘And if it is true, what does that make you? I mean, what’s your interest in someone like me? A specimen for analysis?’

  Jag smiled properly then and shook his head, showing more of the familiar character she liked so much, and said, ‘Me? I’ve always been a sucker for lost sheep.’

  ‘Have you now?’ said Emma, not denying his assessment of her state. ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s a long story and dull. But I’m aware of it. If it helps other people while it’s helping me, why should I fight it? It seems a relatively benign perversion, as they go.’

  ‘And when people stop being lost, do you go off them?’ asked Emma, hoping that her face showed no sign of her unfair irritation at being used to satisfy his dysfunctional psyche.

  Jag looked at her without saying anything for so long that she began to think he was never going to answer. Eventually he put his empty mug down beside the sofa and walked towards the bed. There he knelt on the floor in front of her and took both her hands.

  ‘It has been known,’ he said. ‘That’s not to say it’s inevitable, any more than your probable reactions to an outsider successfully integrating with the group are inevitable.’

  ‘I still like Willow as much as I ever did,’ she said, trying not to sound either angry or pathetic. ‘More, really. She’s more comfortable to be with now that she’s so settled with Tom and everything. I think you m
ight be wrong about me.

  ‘It’s possible. A lot of psychologists often are.’ After a moment he returned to the sofa and said in a different, brisker tone of voice. ‘Someone once said that if we get it right fifty per cent of the time, we’re doing well. So what’s next on the agenda?’

  Emma tried to gather her thoughts and focus on the notes she had written to remind her of the things she wanted to ask Jag.

  ‘Come on, Sunshine. It’s not that bad. It was only a suggestion. You told me there were several things you needed to sort out, and thought a trained psychologist could help. Well, I’m only a half-trained one, but, as I said, I’m at your disposal. If you want me to go away, I will.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, finding some of the words clearing in front of her eyes. ‘I mean, I don’t want you to go. But yes, here we are. OK. Yes. Um. I told you about the wild fluctuations in Lutterworth’s responses to my control questions. You once suggested that might be explained by his guilt over his son’s death, which seems feasible.’ Emma laughed a little. ‘Actually, even Willow agreed.’

  ‘Willow agreed with me?’ said Jag in a voice of pretended awe. ‘My God! I must be brilliant.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Emma, feeling more like herself again. ‘It’s certainly true that every question that provoked a sharp change in his breathing and so on could be interpreted in the light of the boy’s death, but, as you’ll see if you read the questions, the connection is pretty thin in some of them. I wondered if you’d accept that there could be some doubt that it’s his bereavement guilt that made him so sensitive that he saw links to Pipp’s death everywhere.’

  ‘Oh, sure. There’s always doubt,’ said Jag, once more sounding professional. ‘It’s possible that he feels more angry than guilty that his son’s dead. People do.’

  Emma considered that ‘In that case, there are really only two possibilities. One is that he is genuinely innocent of the crash but guilty about something else he was doing; the other, that he is guilty of the accident but knows the only reliable way to beat a polygraph is to fake violent reactions to innocuous questions. Hell! I must talk to somebody he worked with.’

  ‘Why’s that so difficult?’ asked Jag, looking puzzled.

  ‘Well, I don’t know anyone at Hill, Snow, Parkes and I—’ Emma broke off as Jag started to laugh. When she looked at him she saw that his dark eyes had lit up and he was looking thoroughly mischievous.

  ‘You mean you can’t talk to anyone unless you’ve been introduced, do you? Sunshine, you’ve a long way to go yet, haven’t you?’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Take it from me. You want to talk to someone? You just talk. Who d’you want?’

  ‘Well, best of all would be his secretary,’ she said, remembering the postscript to Willow’s latest letter. ‘But I don’t know her name and I can’t believe any switchboard operator is going to take kindly to an enquiry for the secretary of a partner who was booted out years ago because he killed someone.’

  ‘Don’t be pathetic, Emma.’ Jag strode over to the telephone, got the number of Hill, Snow, Parkes from Directory Enquiries, rang it and asked to speak to the secretary of the partner in charge of Expatriate Tax. After a moment Emma heard him say, ‘Hi. I don’t know if you can help me, but when I was last in England—which was a few years ago now, I must admit—I met a great girl. We’ve lost touch, but I’m trying to get hold of her again. She told me she worked for a man called Andrew Lutterworth in your office. When I asked to speak to her, they told me at the desk that he’d left and they wouldn’t say if she’s still with the company or how to get hold of her. Can you help? They were quite shirty with me, and I do want to find her. She was great.’

  He put one hand over the receiver and turned to grin at Emma, saying, ‘She’s called Annie Frome. She left, too. They’re trying to find out where she went. Yes,’ he added into the receiver. ‘Great. Thanks. Yes. Thanks. I will. I’ll give her a call today. G’bye.’

  ‘Well?’ said Emma.

  ‘Simple, she works for an MP now. They can’t remember what his name is, but he’s a backbencher and if you ring the House of Commons, you ought to get her.’

  ‘Jag, you’re a marvel. And you’re right. I was being pathetic, although I could never have faked your accent or your sex. They must have helped.’

  ‘They do sometimes, both of ’em.’ He grinned. ‘Well, I hope she’ll be able to give you what you want.’

  ‘So do I. At last she’ll be able to say whether he’d left her anything to type that morning. If he had really spent all that time in his office, he must have produced something for her to do.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything in your files? It’s so basic someone must have thought of it at the time.’

  ‘Those are the things that usually get missed,’ said Emma. ‘I suspect everyone was concentrating so hard on much more important questions that they never thought to ask. Anyway, it’s worth a try. I know my way around the Palace of Westminster. I did a stint there myself in my nice-girl days. Jag, I’m definitely going to go up to London again. D’you want to come? I can ask Willow if we can have her spare room for the night.’

  ‘And risk her interrogating me about my intentions and my treatment of you again? Not likely. I’ll let you go alone—unless you want protection, help, you know: anything like that?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No, thanks. You’ve done plenty. And you’ve got your own work. You mustn’t spend too much time on mine. You’ve been great, Jag, and I’m so grateful.’

  ‘And so angry still about what I said about outsiders. Don’t worry about it. It’s a natural reaction to uninvited psychologising. I should have kept my mouth shut.’ He smiled more self-consciously than usual. ‘You’d have thought I’d know better by now. I won’t do it again. Let me know how you get on. Oh, and thanks for the tea.’

  He kissed her briefly, collected his helmet and clumped out of her room, boot buckles clanking as usual. Emma noticed guiltily that she felt a sense of deep relief at his absence. Deciding to ignore the feeling because there did not seem to be anything she could do about it she pulled the telephone towards her and called the Daily Mercury’s number.

  ‘Could I speak to Hal Marstall?’ she said when her call was answered.

  ‘I’ll put you through.’

  There was a longer pause than Emma had expected and then an unfamiliar voice, older and rougher than Hal’s, said, ‘Hal Marstall’s phone.’

  ‘Oh, is he there? My name’s Emma Gnatche.’

  ‘He’s not at his desk. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Just that I called. Is that all right?’

  ‘Sure. Has he got your number?’

  Emma dictated it feeling thoroughly silly and very unfair to Jag. There was no reason to reactivate her slight friendship with Hal simply because her dealings with Jag seemed to have been tarnished by what he had said. He was still the man he had been the previous day, when she had been almost sure that she loved him. She felt ungrateful, unsophisticated and in need of a great deal of reassurance. She pressed the buttons for Willow’s number.

  Mrs Rusham answered, sounding unusually flustered.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mrs R. This is Emma. Is it possible for me to have a word with Willow?’

  ‘She’s not here, Miss Gnatche. She’s already gone to Uxbridge.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I thought you’d know. As she was running out of the door, she just said that she was going there on your business. But she didn’t leave a telephone number or an address or anything and I don’t know how to get hold of her. And I need to.’

  ‘Is there something the matter with Lucinda?’ Emma asked urgently.

  ‘No.’ Mrs Rusham’s hasty breathing began to slow a little, and she added more calmly, ‘No, nothing like that. She’s very well. No, it’s Mr Tom. He came back unexpectedly today and he didn’t seem best pleased to find Mrs Worth out.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very likely,’ said Emma at once.

  ‘No
, I know. But I think he must have expected her to be here working or something. Anyway, he’s gone to his office now, but I know Mrs Worth would like to know that he’s back, only I don’t know how to get hold of her. She never does this, you know. She always lets me know where she’s going to be and what time she’ll be back. Always.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much,’ said Emma, realising that she could not possibly ask to be put up in the Mews if Tom had just returned, particularly not if he were angry about whatever Willow was doing on her behalf. ‘I’m sure she’ll be back in no time.’

  ‘Well, I hope so. I mean, Mr Tom did sound quite annoyed. Oh, I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels. Please forget I said that won’t you, Miss Gnatche?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Emma, wondering for a mad moment whether Tom could have thrown things around or shrieked and yelled. After a moment’s private amusement at the impossibility of such a thing, she had another surge of guilt at being the cause of possible conflict between him and Willow.

  ‘Look, could you tell her when she gets in that I rang, but that it wasn’t anything urgent and I’ll ring her again in a few days when she’s likely to be less busy?’ she said. ‘Will you do that?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Mrs Rusham, reverting to her more familiar manner. ‘She will be pleased to know that you telephoned. Goodbye, Miss Gnatche.’

  As Emma replaced the receiver she suddenly remembered that she had an appointment with her professor. Having scrabbled together the papers she was likely to need, she left her room, locked it and ran down the stairs.