by Mark McCrum
‘Did she tell him what it was about?’
‘She couldn’t get hold of Matt personally, because he was in a meeting, but she did tell his assistant that it was something big to do with a major TV celebrity. Matt never got the email. By the time he phoned her back, around five, she wasn’t picking up.’
‘He should definitely talk to the police. Hang on. Maybe this could be our way in.’
‘To …?’
‘The police, of course. I imagine DCI Julie would be extremely interested to hear about this.’
‘So you really think,’ Priya said, her voice dropping, ‘that Family Man did it? Murdered Bryce … and then Grace?’
Their waitress was upon them; it was the same nose-ringed starlet as the previous night. ‘Hello again, sir,’ she said warmly.
‘Jonty may not have been personally involved,’ said Francis, once they’d placed their order and young Marilyn was out of earshot, ‘but I’d say it was perfectly possible, considering everything he stood to lose.’ He sat back and took a swig of wine. ‘Imagine for a moment,’ he continued, ‘that having arrived at the festival, Jonty – or possibly one of his associates – got to hear about what Bryce was planning to reveal on Sunday. It wouldn’t have taken him – or them – long to decide that this was really, really serious for him. In fact, in order to save the Family Man brand Bryce had to be silenced before things could go any further. Now, Bryce is well-off, as a literary journalist he hardly has a respectable position he needs to uphold – so neither bribery nor blackmail are options. However. He is most definitely staying at the White Hart for the weekend. So it wouldn’t be impossible to get to him in a more serious, shall we say final, way, if such a desperate course of action could be countenanced.’
‘OK …’
‘He’s fifty-four years old and a celebrated party animal, no stranger to the kind of recreational drugs that wiser people stop taking before they hit middle age. So maybe his sudden death could be disguised as something altogether more natural, such as a heart attack or a stroke. We already know that Jonty is an expert in poisons from the wild …’
‘But surely anything like that would turn up in a post-mortem?’
‘So maybe he tried something less visible.’
‘Such as?’
‘Strangling is a possibility … as is suffocation.’
‘Strangling would leave a mark, surely?’
‘It’s amazing what you can do with a silk scarf. Suffocation could be even more discreet, and one of the symptoms of that is …’ Francis held up a finger.
‘Yes?’
‘Bloodshot eyes. Which Dr Webster remarked on when he was examining the body.’
‘Did he? I should have been there. I could have told him that Bryce was already red-eyed on Saturday evening. We went for this walk and he … fell over and got some grit behind his contacts.’
Francis nodded thoughtfully. ‘Is that so? Doesn’t rule it out, though, does it? Now just imagine for a moment that Jonty and/or the people around him did decide that something drastic had to be done about Bryce; that a plan was hatched and actioned; that the murderer – or murderers – did the deed, then snuck away from Room 29 in the small hours. When Bryce is discovered, they’ve told themselves, most likely by his girlfriend returning late from the Wyveridge party, his death is going to seem entirely natural. With any luck, they’re going to get away with it. However. When the police arrive and look at the body, they are, for some reason, suspicious. Soon scene-of-crime officers are crawling all over the place and the whole festival is jumping to the wrong – that is, the right – conclusion. Meanwhile, to compound our man’s problems, a keen young hackette is running around asking awkward questions and seems to have found something out.’
‘About what? The truth about Jonty’s private life or … Bryce’s death?’
‘Both, probably. Jonty gets to hear about this or, more likely, realises what’s up when Grace interviews him, which we know she did on Sunday morning. Now he’s got a new problem. If he doesn’t stop her, it’s all going to come out. So she has to be dealt with too – and quick. But what’s he going to do? Grace is far too young for the heart attack/aneurysm trick, and in any case that could hardly be repeated. She’s most unlikely material for “suicide”. But what is there out at Wyveridge that everyone already knows about?’
‘Drugs?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Your starters, sir?’
Francis looked up to see their waitress right above them, her blue eyes wide; her timing was uncanny.
‘So,’ he continued in a low voice, once she’d put their plates down and was well out of the way again, ‘everyone knows about the drugs at Wyveridge.’
‘I guess so.’
‘It’s general gossip that this is what’s fuelling the parties out there. There’s people openly spliffing on the lawns, mountains of coke in the bathrooms, and for those who fancy something a bit more organic, magic mushrooms too. So if our killer can make it look as if Grace had a few shrooms before she jumped from the battlements, when the post-mortem finds traces of psilocybin in her bloodstream, it’s the perfect explanation.’
‘So you’re thinking … that’s where the rest of Eva’s funny tea went?’
‘It had to go somewhere.’
‘But how would Jonty or whoever have known she was going to make it in the first place?’
‘You said yourself that she was offering it around on Friday night. Jonty was there then, wasn’t he?’
‘But on Sunday afternoon?’ said Priya. ‘How on earth could he have known that that gang were going to be there, let alone go for a walk, find some shrooms and randomly brew up another jug?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Perhaps you were half right earlier. Perhaps our murderer had planned to give Grace something else, a tab of Rory’s acid maybe, and then came across this tea instead.’
Priya looked puzzled. ‘So you’re saying … Rory’s involved too?’
‘Not directly. But he might easily have sold Jonty – or an accomplice – one of his tabs. Then again, one might have been pinched from him.’
‘Either of which would explain why he’s acting so oddly.’
‘Exactly. Especially if it’s the selling option. Which would mean that Rory knows who the murderer is, but in order to out him he’s got to admit to dealing Class A drugs. Not the nicest dilemma for a young man training to be a barrister.’
‘No,’ Priya agreed. ‘OK, so then what – in your theory? Jonty arrives out at Wyveridge … with a tab of acid he’s already somehow got from Rory … but then finds the shroom tea …’
‘Already brewed and waiting on the table. Now this is a much more natural and likely alternative. So he dumps the acid idea and runs with that.’
‘And what time is this?’
‘After Rory and co. have gone into town. Unless he came with Grace and somehow made himself scarce. Or unless Rory and co. are covering up and they knew he was there all along.’
‘D’you think that’s likely?’ said Priya.
‘I don’t. I think Eva is honest enough that she would have said something.’
‘I agree. OK, so Jonty gets out to Wyveridge once the coast is clear?’
‘Yes,’ said Francis.
‘But how would he persuade Grace to drink this tea? When she’d already turned Rory and the others down?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t need to persuade her.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Maybe he gave her the tea after she fell.’
Priya’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘What! Like, poured it down her throat … as she lay … dead on the gravel?’
‘It’s a dreadful thought, isn’t it, but perfectly possible.’
Priya nodded silently, an appalled expression on her face. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I guess when the post-mortem comes back we’ll know more.’
‘Or the police will know more, anyway.’
Francis sliced into his Maryland crab cakes, then dipped a forkful into the gleaming orange splodge of Dewkesbury chilli jam that sat to one side.
‘If only there was a draft of this alleged scoop,’ he said, ‘or even the start of what Grace had planned to write, on her laptop, that would be a huge help.’
‘Presumably the police have got that too?’
‘Yes, Fleur told me they took all Grace’s stuff away in bags early this morning.’
‘So come on,’ said Priya, brightly. ‘How were the love birds?’
Francis made a face. ‘With Ranjit’s help I found them snuggled up together in The Sun Rising. Put it this way, I don’t think you need worry unduly about Conal’s broken heart.’
‘Ridiculous man,’ said Priya, wincing visibly. ‘He always was. So theatrical and sentimental. And then he wonders why I had doubts about his sincerity.’
‘More to the point,’ Francis continued, ‘I found out why Grace had Fleur’s video camera with her. She was filming those interviews for a show reel. To help her break into the Sentinel’s online operation. In return for the loan of the camera, Fleur was going to have the use of them for her film. So if the memory card survived the fall, that might be interesting. See who Grace spoke to on Sunday morning and what they said.’
‘Yes,’ Priya agreed.
‘Whatever our wilder speculations,’ said Francis, ‘we’ve reached an impasse. We need to speak to the police as soon as possible. Find out proper answers to these questions. At least now we’ve got Matthew Ashcombe’s evidence to offer them. Not to mention all your thoughts about Jonty.’
Meal over, they left the restaurant and walked back to the White Hart together. The rain had stopped. The pavements were still awash with dark puddles, but overhead the moon rode clear across a star-bright sky, a few fluffy, backlit outriders of cloud accompanying her on her way. Near the hotel, Priya slipped her hand into Francis’s arm. They walked on together, saying nothing.
TUESDAY 22ND JULY
TWENTY-SEVEN
Three hours later, Francis woke to hear a quiet sobbing coming from the double bed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked into the darkness.
‘It’s nothing,’ came Priya’s voice. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘That’s OK.’ He yawned, pulled himself up from the sofa and went over. Priya’s hair was a black tangle against the white pillows; her big brown eyes shone in the light that filtered through the curtains from the street.
‘I can’t stop thinking about poor Grace,’ she said. ‘It’s just so awful. She was so young.’
‘She was. It’s hard to believe that it’s happened.’
He sat with her in silence. From somewhere nearby came the squeals of cats fighting.
‘You know,’ Priya said quietly. ‘I didn’t just lose my sister.’
‘No,’ said Francis; he imagined she was about to elaborate about the unborn baby.
‘My father and brother too.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘In a car crash.’
‘My God …’
‘It was barely a year after the fire that killed Chinni. They were out together on the M42 on a foggy November night. The visibility was even worse because of smoke that drifted across from some fireworks display at a site next to the road. Bilal – that’s my brother – always drove like a lunatic anyway. They smashed into a lorry and another piled in behind them and the Nissan was crushed like it had been in one of those machines they use for cars without insurance. Loads of others were involved. It made the national news.’
There was silence. Francis didn’t know what to say. ‘How terrible for you,’ he managed. Then, feebly: ‘You must miss them … dreadfully.’
‘I do. Particularly my dad. He was always so great to us girls when we were little. He could be strict at times, but then again, he was always spoiling us too, laughing and joking with us. We were his little angels, Chinni and I. He used to call us that, his little English angels.’
‘His little English angels.’
‘Yes. That was his kind of sense of humour. He was joking, in a way, but in another he wasn’t. He’d come over from India, you see, as a young man. He had an arranged marriage with my mother, who was from over here, and he missed … all that. Being at home, the extended family, friends, the weather …’ She smiled. ‘Even though that life was grindingly poor. Not that he hadn’t wanted to come. He had. But I always got the feeling that the UK – or “UK” as he called it – wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He used to say that as a boy he’d been told the streets of England were paved with gold.’ Priya chuckled. ‘That was his exact expression. “Paved with gold.” Like something from a fairy story. I don’t think working in his father-in-law’s garage ever quite lived up to it.’
‘And your brother?’ Francis asked.
Priya sighed. ‘If you want to know the truth, we were never that close. Mum always spoilt Bilal terribly. You know, he could go out, but Chinni and I couldn’t. He could have his music on loud, but we couldn’t. When we were growing up, he was like the little prince in the house, and we had to scurry around after him. He didn’t have Dad’s gentleness either. He fancied himself as this kind of Asian hard man. He had a bhangra ringtone, loads of bling, all that. He was never going to be a mere mechanic like Dad, either. He’d decided that at about the age of eight. I actually used to like messing about in the workshop with Dad. It was fun. But Bilal was always above that. He was going to be a bhangra star, even if the silly tosser had no talent. When that didn’t work out he became this, like, club promoter, organising gigs around Derby. Then across to Nottingham and Leicester too. He always had some pretty blonde on his arm, even while the fat hypocrite thought his sisters should settle for the Punjabi farmer option. But that was typical, because he was also incredibly proud of our caste – jat – which is like the farmer, landowning class. Even though he’d only been to India once. I just thought it was silly. But there are loads like him. They get drunk at weddings and sing all these songs about how great they are to be jats. I always thought they were dickheads.’
‘What about your mother?’
Priya made a face. ‘She’s basically never got over it. She talks about going back to her family in India, but I don’t think she ever will.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Francis. Then: ‘Is she a burden to you?’
‘She could be, I suppose. But I’m afraid I don’t let her be. I’m not that much in touch with her now. We fell out badly after Dad died, because she wanted me to marry the guy who was meant for Chinni and I refused.’
‘Where was he from? India too?’
‘Yeah. He was the son of this, like, great old boyhood friend of Dad’s. But basically, as far as I was concerned, he was just another Punjabi jat looking for a UK passport. If Dad and Bilal had been alive I’d probably have had to go along with it, but with them gone I didn’t feel obliged any more. My uncles and cousins may tut-tut, and say this and that about me, but there’s not a lot they can do.’
‘No …’
‘I suppose it’s one of the things that’s made me so ambitious. I want to do well for Chinni as much as anything else. It was always her dream to be a successful journalist. And I suppose, in a weird kind of way, I want to prove to Dad and Bilal that I can do it, even though they’re not around to see it. D’you get that?’
‘Yes,’ Francis said quietly. ‘I do.’ Then: ‘Did Bryce know … about all this?’
‘No. I never told him much about my family. Conal neither. Now I’m wondering why I’ve told you.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Francis. ‘It’s hardly a story I’m going to share.’
‘You do understand, though. Why I just want to be Priya Kaur. My own person, getting on in the world, leaving all that shit behind.’
‘Completely,’ said Francis. ‘For what it’s worth, I never talk about Kate, either.’
‘Why should you?’ There was silence. Outside, the cats seemed to have
resolved their differences. ‘Have you ever got over it?’ she asked.
‘What happened in Egypt was a terrible, unbelievable thing. But after about a year of being in pieces, I realised I had to stop saying “what if?” and get on with my life. Without her. So I did. There comes a point when it’s no use dwelling on a tragedy like that. You can take time out to remember it, when you want to, but otherwise you have to move forwards …’
‘Exactly,’ said Priya. ‘You do.’
Another silence. ‘You never found anyone else, did you?’ she added.
‘No,’ said Francis, and with that, it was he who was in tears.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, taking his hand.
‘It’s not OK,’ he muttered. Gradually he got control of himself. He took several deep breaths and wiped his face on the corner of the sheet. ‘I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘God help me, I’ve tried. This woman, that woman, but it’s never right. And then I think: maybe I was just very very lucky to meet someone I fitted so perfectly with when I was so young. Maybe that’s not meant to happen twice in a lifetime …’
He stopped abruptly. He hated self-pity, in any manifestation.
‘Maybe, Francis, deep down,’ said Priya, ‘you don’t want it to happen. Maybe that’s why these relationships never work out.’
‘Don’t think I haven’t thought that too.’
They were alone together in a dark hotel bedroom in the middle of the night. Warm hands entwined. Now Priya was gently squeezing his palm, her thumb stroking the back of his forefinger.
‘Come here,’ she said quietly.
‘No, Priya. Let’s finish what we have to do first. OK?’
He withdrew his hand from hers and got to his feet, then leant over her and kissed her softly on the forehead. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. Just the smell of her was doing powerful things to him. But the poor girl had only lost her boyfriend two nights ago. She was clearly still in shock. If there was going to be a time for this to develop in any constructive way, it shouldn’t be now.