‘Did she train with him?’
‘She had a couple of lessons, but then gave it up. She’s not a great sticker at things, my sister. And she’s never cared as much about staying fit. She’s not in the public gaze like me.’
He nodded. Obviously the sisters didn’t tell each other everything. And it seemed Erik Lingoss really was discreet.
‘Tell me about Erik,’ he invited.
‘We clicked from the first moment. He seemed to know at once just how to motivate me, exactly what my body needed, exactly how far and how fast he could push me. He was an excellent trainer.’
‘But it was more than that.’
She sighed. ‘We understood each other. Sometimes there are people like that – don’t you find? The moment you meet, you connect with them on a deeper level, as if you’ve always known each other. From the first meeting we spoke to each other without reserve. He was like a dear friend.’ She paused.
‘How soon did it become a physical relationship?’ Slider prompted.
‘It was always physical,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘He was my trainer. My body was his responsibility.’
‘I mean, how soon did it become sexual?’
She hesitated, then said, ‘It was always sexual. There was a spark between us from the first moment.’ She looked closely at him, then at Atherton, then Slider again. ‘You are thinking a woman of my age has no right to a man of Erik’s age. If it was the other way round, if he was an older man having an affair with a younger woman, you’d slap him on the back and tell him what a fine fellow he was.’
‘I wasn’t thinking that at all,’ said Slider stoically. ‘Please, just tell me what happened between you.’
‘He was beautiful,’ she said. ‘You’ve no idea. Some trainers are too muscled, all lumps and bumps, but his body was perfectly in proportion – everything the human frame should be and rarely is. He was like a glorious, sleek, lithe cat. I loved looking at him. Watching him move. And he loved my body, too. As an artist loves his creation. We worked together to make something beautiful.’
Atherton didn’t say anything, but Slider, who knew him very well, felt him cringe at the language. Well, she was a writer, he thought resignedly. It was her business to see more than was there. To get her to talk, he must encourage her to use her own words.
‘So it was natural for you to drift into a sexual relationship,’ he prompted, in as un-policemanlike manner as possible.
‘After training, he would give me a massage,’ she said, almost dreamily. She was staring into the past now. ‘And then we would make love. He brought me back to life after a long sleep. My husband – suffice to say, we lead separate lives. Erik made me feel beautiful, young again.’ She looked at him sharply as though he had demurred. ‘You’re a man – you can’t understand what that’s like. Women become invisible when they pass forty. They’re not supposed even to want to be touched any more. But inside, we are still the same age as we always were. We don’t want it any less than a man – but we’re not allowed to have it. But Erik – to him, I wasn’t old and invisible. I was just me.’
Slider felt Atherton stir in embarrassment, and knew he was thinking what a deluded idiot, or words to that effect. She was still staring at memory and didn’t notice. Slider had to force himself to burst her bubble.
‘Did you pay him for the extra attentions?’
She looked as though he had slapped her, but she was right back to the present. Her mouth turned down. ‘It’s not the way you think. Yes, I paid him extra, but it wasn’t paying for sex, as though he was a … a rent boy.’
‘You gave him presents,’ Slider suggested.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was saving up to start his own business. I have plenty of money, more than I can spend. What I gave him meant nothing to me, but it was important to him. There was nothing sordid about it. I’d have given him more, enough for the whole start-up, but he wouldn’t take it. He was honourable, you see. He said he had to earn it himself. He had a lot of pride. He’d come up the hard way, and he wanted to be independent, and to prove he had it in him to succeed without help. I respected that. It was one of the things I loved about him, his honesty.’
‘You paid him in cash?’
‘It was easier that way.’
‘You mean, it didn’t leave any trace?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You left no evidence lying around – cheque book stumps, credit card statements. So your husband didn’t know that you and Erik were lovers.’
‘Of course he didn’t,’ she said, irritated. ‘We were absolutely discreet. It would have been—’
‘Yes?’
She frowned. ‘Brian and I don’t have a sexual relationship, haven’t for years. But he’s still my husband. It would have been insulting to him to flaunt a lover in his face. I wouldn’t do it. I have more respect for him than that. And for myself.’
‘But he might have suspected anyway?’
She shook her head firmly. ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t. Like most men, he thinks a woman of my age is past it. It would never cross his mind that I might be interested in a handsome young man. Or that a handsome young man could possibly be interested in me.’ Yes, there was a touch of bitterness there. She might appreciate Seagram’s loyalty, but resented the part that was pity-loyalty.
‘It sounds like a perfect arrangement,’ said Slider. ‘So what went wrong?’
She frowned. ‘Why should you think something went wrong?’
‘You found out that Erik was having sex with someone else as well as you,’ said Slider. It was a guess, but she reddened slightly.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do.’ He stared at her steadily. She held it. ‘You discovered you were not exclusive.’ Her lips trembled. ‘And to make it worse, she was younger than you.’ Kelly-Ann, Ivanka and Lucy were all younger. Erik’s other clients might not all have been – her sister was older – but it was still a good spread bet.
The ‘younger’ bit stung her. ‘I didn’t care about that,’ she said. ‘I’m not that insecure. The age difference didn’t matter with Erik and me – I’ve told you that already. And it wasn’t sexual jealousy either. I was surprised, yes, but he was young and virile with tremendous energy, and realistically, there was bound to be some overspill. When a man’s tempted, it’s more or less automatic, isn’t it? I was hurt at first, I admit it, but when I thought about it, I realized it didn’t mean anything to him. It didn’t touch what we had.’
‘Which was what?’ Atherton couldn’t help asking.
She looked at him. ‘Love,’ she said starkly. Her eyes were too shiny. For a moment it seemed as though they might run over, but she tightened her lips. ‘We loved each other. I see what you’re thinking, you with your youth and your assurance and your arrogance, but you can’t take that from me. You can believe what you like, but you don’t know, because you weren’t there. It was love.’
Atherton had no follow-up question. Slider took it back.
‘You say you didn’t mind him having sex with someone else. So what did you mind?’
She hesitated. ‘It was too close to home,’ she said at last. ‘My husband mentioned one day in passing that his assistant, Lucy, was going out with Erik.’ She made a slight face at the words ‘going out’.
‘He knew Erik?’
‘He knew he was my trainer, that’s all. He knew the name. He just mentioned in passing that Lucy had said she had been seeing him. And it was obvious from the way he said it that he didn’t know there was anything more between Erik and me.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I told Erik it must stop. I told him he must break up with her.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t know. A few weeks ago.’
‘And what did Erik say?’
‘He was fine about it. Said he understood. Apologized if I’d been upset. Said she didn’t matter to him, and he wouldn’t see her again.’
/> ‘And you believed him?’
‘Of course I did.’ She was impatient. ‘You don’t understand – things between us were at a much deeper level than that. He could no more have deceived me than I could deceive myself.’
The words hung on the air, and she looked quickly from one man to the other as if to catch any exchanged glance of ridicule. The temptation was, of course, to believe she was hopelessly self-deluding about what a young man could want from a rich older woman – and she was intelligent enough to know that. But from Slider’s point of view it hardly mattered whether it had been true love or a true facsimile. He left a pause for her to relax off her guard, then said quietly, ‘So what happened to make you want to kill him?’
Her scalp shifted backwards and she seemed to pale. ‘Nothing! I didn’t! What are you talking about?’
‘You arranged to see him on Tuesday night, at a time when your husband would think you were safely in your room working. A time when you knew no one would ever disturb you, so you could slip out and back unseen, and never be suspected.’
‘This is madness!’ she said.
‘You lied to us. We know you had an appointment with him. We know you went there, to his flat. You went to his flat, and you killed him. What happened? Did you have a quarrel? Did you lash out in a temper?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘It will be better for you to admit it now. Telling more lies will count against you. If you struck him in hot blood, without meaning to kill him, that will be taken into consideration.’ There were the finishing-off blows, but he wouldn’t go into that now. Get the admission first.
But her face had gone cold and hard. ‘I didn’t kill him. How could you even think it? And I didn’t go to his flat that night. I’ve already told you, I was at home working. My husband bears witness to that. And now I’ve done talking to you. If you want to speak to me again, you will have to go through my solicitor. I’ve nothing more to say.’
He nodded calmly. ‘That’s as you wish. But I have to tell you, the evidence against you is sufficient to warrant further investigation. We will have to search your premises and examine your bank and credit card accounts and telephone log.’
‘Absolutely not!’ she said hotly.
‘You have no choice in the matter. I’m sorry,’ he said, and he meant it.
But he remembered Erik Lingoss lying like discarded clothing with his head bashed in. That was the bottom line.
‘She’s a cool one,’ Atherton said as they went back to the office afterwards. ‘Took her a while to get lawyered up.’ He looked at his boss. ‘You’re not going to say you don’t think her capable of violence like that?’
‘I wouldn’t say that about anyone.’
‘There’s quite a lot of violence in her books. Interestingly, in the last one, Blood River, an older woman kills her unfaithful lover. OK, he was a double agent putting her network in peril, but still …’
‘A jury would enjoy that,’ said Slider. ‘All the same, the fact that she went to his flat doesn’t mean she killed him.’
‘It would be a bit of coincidence if someone else came along, just after her perfectly innocent visit, and murdered him,’ said Atherton. ‘Especially as she wasn’t in the habit of going to his flat.’
‘It’s a pity that camera didn’t cover the door.’
‘You think she just drove there to sit in her car to sing “The Street Where You Live” under his window?’
‘No, I mean we need our evidence to be watertight. She’s a very rich woman who’ll get the very best legal representation. If they can get the tip of a crowbar of doubt into any crack …’
‘Oh. Well, we can log and trace every other car that passed. And every pedestrian. And I’m betting none of them will have any connection with Lingoss. People don’t tend to have multiple suspicious visitors on the night they get murdered.’
‘Unless they’re drug dealers.’
‘True. But he wasn’t. So, we get a warrant to search her flat?’
‘Yes, though I don’t suppose we’ll find bloodstained clothing or a handy diary entry saying “I done it”.’
‘We’ll have to pin our hopes on cameras and her mobile logging the entire journey. Something she can’t wriggle out of. Oh, and what about Lingoss’s missing phone?’
‘I think her flat is out of the area where it was turned off. But of course it doesn’t mean it didn’t go on there afterwards. If she’s got it, we’ll find it.’
‘We’ve got the motive, anyway. She was really in love with him, and thought he was in love with her. Pathetic!’
‘She’s only fifty, and very attractive. Young men do fall in love with mature women.’
‘And vice versa. But I can’t help thinking of the money – bundles of lovely fifties in a shoe box. A man with good active hormones doesn’t have to try very hard to simulate love. We know he could be charming. And we know he was doing other people. She might have been in love with him, but I doubt it was reciprocal.’
‘Yet he broke it off with Lucy for her sake,’ Slider said. ‘He didn’t have to.’
‘If he hadn’t, Steenkamp would have found out about it, wouldn’t she, from blabby hubby? And then – leave this house and never darken my door again. Bye-bye lovely cash.’
‘You’re such a cynic,’ said Slider. ‘I don’t know how Emily stands it.’
‘She’s a journalist,’ said Atherton. ‘When it comes to cynicism, she’s the guv’nor: I’m the merest tyro.’
FOURTEEN
When You Vacuum, Everyone Can Hear You Scream
In the age of the computer and Online Everything, the information was all there to be accessed. It only required a bit of high-powered leaning to get it released. Detective Superintendent Porson had leaned with the best in his time, and with the threat of the march looming over him, he gave it his all. The mobile data was promised for the afternoon, the bank’s for the next morning. Meanwhile, every available hand was set to examining traffic camera and ANPC logs.
Slider had just finished a belated lunch of a cheese-and-tomato sandwich at his desk, when he received a telephone call from a solicitor, Michael Friedman, to say that any further contact with his client, Ms Steenkamp, must be channelled through him. He said it with steely politeness, and in a voice so upper-class and armour-piercing it could have brought down jet fighters.
‘Friedman,’ Atherton said when Slider told him afterwards. ‘Solicitor to the stars.’
‘I thought the name sounded familiar.’
‘He’s one of the ninety-nine per cent of lawyers who give the rest a bad name. He was the brief who got Foxy Fairbairn off that groping charge. Well, he got off, so one surmises it was Friedman.’
‘“One surmises”?’ said Hart, passing at that moment. ‘Gawd, you don’t even talk like a copper.’
‘I take that as a compliment,’ said Atherton; then frowned and called after her, ‘What do you mean, “even”?’
Later on that afternoon, Hart was back, and spread out the pages of the mobile log while the others gathered round to breathe over her shoulder. The network log first, which showed the position of the device as its signal was passed from cell mast to cell mast – though with a journey as short as from Campden Hill Square to Russell Close there were not many masts involved. But the log showed the device stationary all day within the area containing Campden Hill Square, then moving through a second, covering Kensington High Street (with a short pause, which could have been traffic lights), and becoming stationary in a third, which covered Russell Close. It remained stationary for twenty-three minutes before moving again.
‘A solicitor would say none of that proves anything,’ Gascoyne said somewhat wistfully.
‘Yeah, but a jury can use common sense, and common sense says where else would she be going,’ said Hart. ‘And at that particular time.’
‘But this is interesting,’ said Atherton. ‘The return journey.’
Instead of travelling strai
ght back to the first zone, the device remained stationary for almost half an hour in the second zone.
‘She made a stop on the way.’
‘Ken High Street,’ said LaSalle. ‘Where her old man’s antique shop is. And the gym – Shapes.’
‘And a lot else besides,’ Gascoyne pointed out. ‘The shop would have been shut at that time of night. And why would she go to the gym?’
‘I’m just saying,’ said LaSalle.
‘You’re missing the point,’ Atherton interrupted. ‘Zone two, if we can call it that, is the area we’ve already identified as where Lingoss’s mobile was when it was turned off.’
‘Which covers Allen Street, where Jack Gallo’s local pub is. And Marloes Road, where Jack Gallo’s flat is,’ said LaSalle.
Hart twisted her head round to stare at him. ‘Are you tryna say she was in league wiv Gallo to off Lingoss? Maybe you think he paid her to do it – hired assassin?’
‘Settle down,’ Slider said. ‘There’s a hundred thousand places within zone two and a hundred thousand reasons she might have stopped off. She might just have parked somewhere because her hands were shaking too much to drive.’
‘She might have stopped for a drink or a cup of coffee to settle her nerves before going home,’ Gascoyne said.
Hart gave him a look and groaned. ‘If we’ve got to check every pub and coffee shop in the area …?’
‘If it comes to it, we’ll have to do it,’ said Slider stoically. ‘But for now we need more information. To begin with – Hart, co-ordinate the location data of Steenkamp’s device with that of Lingoss’s, see if they were in the same places at the same times. If we can show they were travelling together, it makes our case stronger.’
‘Yeah, how else could she get his phone, if she hadn’t just killed him,’ Hart agreed.
‘I’m not sure why she’d take it in the first place,’ Atherton said, ‘but still …’
Cruel as the Grave Page 18