Loretta Lawson 03 - Don't Leave Me This Way

by Joan Smith

  She found one in Holloway Road and had a long conversation with a helpful man about which type of lock would be the most suitable, both for her front door and for the street door she shared with Shahin. She was about to ask him to send someone round that afternoon when she remembered that her neighbour was away.

  ‘Oh – I’d better wait till she comes back,’ she said regretfully, thinking it was hardly fair to change the locks without consulting her.

  She put the phone down and looked at her watch, surprised to see it was only half past one; she felt as if she’d already lived through a complete day. She got up and looked for her shoulder-bag, thinking she would go to Wool worth’s in Chapel Market and buy a sturdy bolt for her front door. It would make her feel a bit safer while she was inside the flat, and with any luck Shahin would be back on Monday. She found the bag on the floor in the hall, where she’d dumped it; checking that her purse and keys were inside, she closed the front door carefully behind her and went down the stairs.

  Chapter 13

  The following morning Loretta drew back the shiny new bolt on her front door and slipped downstairs to pick up the Sunday Herald. She scanned the front page as she returned to her flat, and her eye was caught by a headline: ‘Two held in Christmas card killing’. The brief story underneath reported that two men had been charged with the murder of seventeen-year-old Yvonne Owen, a student whose body had been found on the outskirts of Lymington just before Christmas. Two men, Loretta thought, appalled, and pushed away the horrible image this information conjured up. She recalled Ghilardi’s description of the murder as particularly nasty, but she hadn’t known any of the details – had hardly thought about it, so preoccupied was she with Sandra’s death. It certainly explained why Ghilardi had been up all Friday night; he might even have been interrogating the suspects. Loretta wondered what sort of men they were, why they’d done it, and shuddered. Then she reminded herself that they hadn’t been tried yet, reading on and discovering that they were due to appear in court in Lymington on Monday. Would Ghilardi have to be present? She couldn’t bear the thought of a further delay before inquiries into Bob Fleming got under way. But perhaps Ghilardi was right, and Steve Farr had already initiated them. . . She tutted with impatience, irritated by the revelation that, against her expectations, office politics seemed to affect the police as much as any other organization.

  ‘In, Bertie. I’ll feed you in a moment.’

  His appetite whetted by the outing of the previous day, the cat was now trying to get out of the flat at every opportunity. Shooing him inside, Loretta went into the kitchen, scraped the last third of a tin of cat food into a dish, and put it on the floor. She filled the kettle and, while she waited for it to boil, glanced over the rest of the Herald front page, learning that the Aids toll had risen again, and that severe weather in Scotland was expected to move south, paralysing major roads in the north of England –

  The phone rang and Loretta looked up in surprise. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, and she wasn’t expecting any calls.

  ‘Hello,’ she said warily, wondering if the early morning nuisance caller who had plagued her for a few weeks the previous autumn had come back.

  ‘Loretta? Where have you been?’

  ‘Oh, Sally.’ Loretta was relieved. ‘I tried ringing you last night but you hadn’t got back. I was feeling a bit – I decided to go to the pictures, on the spur of the moment really, and it was quite late when I came home. . .’ Loretta remembered that Sally didn’t know about the search of her flat, and she reached for a kitchen chair to make herself comfortable.

  ‘You left your answering-machine off,’ Sally announced before Loretta could begin. ‘I rang and rang – I was so worried, and there’s something I’ve been dying to tell you. I’ve found out how Sandra met Bob Fleming.’

  ‘You have?’ Loretta was only mildly interested; that part of the story seemed like ancient history to her now.

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’ Sally sounded disappointed.

  ‘Of course –’

  This half-hearted assurance was enough. ‘Well, I wasn’t convinced she’d answered an advert or something – I just couldn’t imagine her applying for that sort of job. I was sure there must be something else ... I couldn’t think of any way of finding out, so in the end I rang the unit, more or less on spec. Eventually I got hold of Frank, the bloke I was telling you about – the one who runs it. They wouldn’t give me his home number but I said it was urgent and they got him to ring me back. . . He didn’t want to say anything, but I kept on – I had to tell him what it was about, I’m sorry. I didn’t mention your name or anything –’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if you had, I’m sure he doesn’t know me from Adam.’ Loretta couldn’t help smiling at Sally’s ingrained habit of caution.

  ‘Oh.’ Sally sounded surprised. ‘Anyway, what he said in the end was – Sandra was asked to leave because of a relationship with a client. We’d already guessed that, of course, that’s not what I –’

  ‘This is the new bit,’ she went on, unable to hide her excitement. ‘I found out his name – the client. And it’s Fleming.’

  She paused for effect. Loretta’s eyes opened wide, and Sally now had her full attention.

  ‘Fleming? You don’t mean Sandra was having an affair with Bob Fleming?’ Loretta asked incredulously.

  ‘No, silly; his son.’

  ‘Good God.’ Loretta’s mind scrolled back like a computer, retrieving bits of information which might connect with Sally’s revelation. She pictured the suggestive postcard in Sandra’s luggage, the Christmas card with the leering Santa.

  ‘Is his name Paul?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Oh, I think – I don’t remember,’ Sally said, crestfallen. ‘It might’ve been. It was the Fleming bit that – Why d’you ask?’

  ‘The Christmas card – I told you about it, the one sent to Norfolk Gardens. It was signed Paul.’

  ‘Oh, but why would he send it there? I mean, if she was working for his dad – I presume he got her the job in the first place. He’d be bound to know she’d moved –’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Loretta said slowly. ‘Unless. . . unless his dad didn’t know about them having an affair. I got the impression – I had a feeling he was quite young, whoever wrote the card –’ she was thinking more about the postcard than the Christmas card, but she couldn’t tell Sally that ‘ – and I don’t suppose Fleming would be very pleased at the idea. . . His son being seduced by an older woman, I mean. He would see it like that, don’t you think?’

  ‘God, yes,’ Sally agreed. ‘All that guff about being married to the same woman for thirty years. When it comes to sex, crooks are the most moralistic. . .’

  ‘So maybe they thought it was safer to use her old address. We don’t know how often Fleming goes to the club, or whether she had a separate letter-box. . .’

  ‘Gosh, do you think he found out?’ Sally asked suddenly. ‘I mean, it gives him an extra motive –’

  ‘I was thinking that, too.’

  ‘Just as well you didn’t turn up at that caff on your own,’ Sally exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, I was quite safe – that was just a ruse,’ Loretta said without thinking. ‘I don’t –’

  ‘What d’you mean, a ruse?’

  ‘Of course, I haven’t had a chance. . .’ Loretta described what had happened at her flat the previous day.

  ‘You mean you stayed there on your own last night?’ Sally asked, aghast. ‘You should have come here – I could have made you a bed on the sofa.’

  ‘It’s all right, Sally, I don’t think they’ll be back – neither does Ghilardi. To be honest, I didn’t even call the local police.’

  ‘You’re mad! Sandra’s dead, Loretta, you seem to have forgotten that –’

  ‘I know, but I haven’t got what they want – what Fleming wants.’

  ‘But he might be a – a murderer.’

  ‘I think that’s going a bit far. . . It’s quite possible he was t
here on New Year’s Eve, I agree, or he sent someone after her –’ Loretta, who had been quite comfortable on her own in the building, suddenly felt uneasy.

  ‘Someone who attacked her – someone she was so frightened of she crashed her car –’

  Loretta sighed. ‘I don’t think there’s any point. . . Did you find out anything else from – from Frank?’ she asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Anything – no. Look Loretta, I don’t think you should be there on your own. Is your neighbour at home? Downstairs, I mean?’

  ‘I – I’m pretty sure she’s gone away for the weekend.’

  Sally gave an exasperated sigh. ‘That makes it – why don’t you come round for lunch and we’ll talk about it?’

  ‘Thanks, Sally, but I can’t. It’s my sister’s birthday on Tuesday and I’ve got to go to Camden Market and look for a present – it’s my last chance. And I’ve got masses of marking to do. Everything’s all right, really. I’ve talked to the police in Lymington, they’ll be on to Fleming tomorrow –’

  ‘What about this evening, then? Fliss’ll be in bed, we can have a proper chat.’

  ‘We-ell –’

  ‘Please, Loretta. Come about eight. It won’t be anything special, just some pasta, but – but it’ll make me feel better,’ Sally finished honestly.

  ‘All right.’ Loretta gave in. ‘D’you want me to bring anything?’ She had been planning a rather pleasant supper, and she could at least make the pudding –

  ‘No, leave it to me.’ Sally said firmly. ‘See you at eight.’

  Loretta put down the phone, pulling a face. She was perfectly safe in the flat, Sally was being wildly over-protective. . . She boiled the kettle again, made a cup of tea, and took it back to bed, snuggling up under the quilt with her arms free to hold the paper. It was getting colder, she thought, goose pimples appearing on her bare skin. Either that, or the conversation with Sally had unsettled her.

  Half an hour later she got out of bed, put on her warmest clothes and, in a somewhat disgruntled frame of mind, left the flat for her trip to Camden.

  Loretta ran downstairs at ten past nine the following morning, afraid she was going to be late for her ten o’clock lecture. The post had arrived and she scooped up three letters, two for herself and one for Shahin. The latter she added to the pile of envelopes on the meter cupboard, then glanced at the others. She recognized her mother’s handwriting on one of them and stuffed it into her shoulder-bag; it was probably a plea not to forget Jenny’s birthday, and her sister’s present was sitting in her bag, waiting to be posted. The second letter, a largeish brown envelope with an Oxford postmark, had her puzzled for a moment until she realized it was from Robert. The envelope was thick, as though it contained several sheets of paper, and Loretta’s face fell. Robert hadn’t phoned since Saturday, and she had been hoping that he’d thought better of it. To be fair, the letter had been posted on Friday, and he might now be regretting. . . She didn’t have time to deal with it now, she thought, checking her watch; she should be running through her ideas on the interplay of tragedy and comedy in the novels of Elizabeth Bowen, not dithering in the hall over a letter from an ex-lover. She slid the envelope into her bag, next to the letter from her mother, and let herself out into the street.

  After the majority of her students had filed out, she lingered in the lecture theatre for ten minutes or so, talking to one of her brightest third-years about The Death of the Heart, and got back to her office to find a message on her desk to call Mr Gillard. She stared at it for a moment, then recognized it as Mrs Whittaker’s attempt at Ghilardi. She picked up the phone, dialled Lymington police station, and got the engaged tone. Loretta looked at her watch, deciding she’d try again in five minutes, then remembered that Martha Campbell, a second-year who seemed to be having a lot of problems with her set work, had an appointment to bring in a much overdue essay at eleven-thirty. There was a knock on the door and the girl appeared, slightly early and with a sheepish grin on her face.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ cried Loretta, correctly reading her expression. ‘What’s the excuse this time? Martha, we really can’t go on like this –’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Lawson. I was going to do it over the weekend, honestly I was, but I got arrested –’

  ‘Arrested?’

  ‘Yes – I thought you’d approve.’ She looked hurt. ‘It was at the South African embassy, the twenty-four hour picket. . .’

  Loretta dropped her head into her hands, completely disarmed. It was, she had to admit, the most novel excuse she’d ever heard.

  ‘We weren’t doing anything,’ Martha was assuring her, ‘just standing on the pavement, but this policeman appeared and said we were causing an obstruction ... I pointed out people could get by, and the next thing I knew I was in this police van –’

  Loretta lifted her head. ‘And you didn’t think to mention you had an essay to write on consciousness and the death of the self in The Waves?’ She held up her hand. ‘All right, that was a joke. Did they charge you?’

  ‘No. In the end they just let us go.’

  ‘All right. You’ve got till Friday. This is your last chance. I mean it. That essay has got to be on my desk at ten o’clock, or-’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Lawson, it will be, I promise.’

  Martha scuttled towards the door, disappearing through it before Loretta could specify what course of action she would take if the essay failed to materialize. It was just as well, for she hated invoking formal procedures against even the most slovenly of her students. She reached for the phone to try Ghilardi again. She was told he’d nipped out for five minutes, so she left her name and number and put down the phone. She stared restlessly round the room, and her eye fell on her shoulder-bag, reminding her that she hadn’t yet opened the morning’s post. She went over to the bag, unenthusiastically drawing out the envelope from Robert, and slid her finger under the flap at the back. Inside she felt something glossy, and when she upended the envelope a bundle of photographs fell out. There was a note on top, held in place by an elastic band, and she read: ‘Thought you’d like to see these. Keep them – I’ve got copies of the ones I want. Robert.’

  It was so short and to the point that Loretta was almost disappointed. She removed the elastic band, gazing at a picture of herself in her red coat on Hampstead Heath. She remembered the occasion; she and Robert had gone for a walk there one Sunday afternoon before Christmas. There were two more from the same day, then a photograph of herself and Robert peering tipsily at the camera over an impressive collection of wine and Perrier bottles. She stared at it, wondering when and where it had been taken, and it was the gold dress which eventually jogged her memory: Christmas Eve, in a restaurant on Islington Green. They had been getting on well that night, she thought with a tiny pang of regret – as well as they’d ever done, which wasn’t saying much. She passed on to the next picture, squinting at a print which had somehow got in upside-down.

  ‘Oh!’ She’d turned it round and Sandra was smiling up at her, a champagne glass held high in one hand. Loretta recognized the background as her own kitchen, and realized that the picture had been taken on Christmas Day. Poor Sandra – she looked so cheerful, even if her expression had been assumed for the camera, and only a week later. . .

  Loretta shivered violently and shuffled the picture to the back. Now she was looking at herself and Sandra sitting side by side on the grey sofa in her drawing-room; now one of herself by the fireplace; now a close-up of Sandra’s face, this time topped by a paper hat which came down almost to the top of her glasses. Loretta stared at the picture, which was far from flattering; the silly hat emphasized the length of Sandra’s face, making her look horsey, and her eyes were unnaturally large behind her glasses. Loretta couldn’t imagine why Sandra had allowed Robert to take it, presumably she hadn’t realized what she looked like. Suddenly something about the photo caught Loretta’s attention; she held it up, observing it closely. The phone rang and she groped for it, her eyes still fixed on
the image in front of her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Loretta? Is that you? It’s Derek Ghilardi.’

  Loretta put down the picture. ‘You got my message?’

  ‘Yes, and you’ll be pleased to know it worked.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘Steve saw sense, yes. And you’ll be interested to know I’ve just had a call back from a DS in Balham who knows all about Bob Fleming.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Yep. They’ve had their eye on him for some time. Seems he hasn’t put a foot wrong since he finished a stretch for armed robbery seven or eight years ago, but they’ve, got a file as thick as a telephone directory. . . He’s clever – he’s got two or three straight firms as a front, including the health club and a bathroom business –’

  ‘A bathroom business?’ Loretta sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yeah, you know – they come round to your house and draw the thing, fit it, the lot. Very good way of laundering dirty money – sorry, no pun intended. They do the job cheap, file false invoices for twice the amount – very useful little number.’

  ‘But what do you think he’s – what’s his real business?’

  ‘He’s a fence. He’s given up the dirty work himself, lets other people take the risk. He’s got some pretty nasty friends – they think he works on and off for the Cook brothers.’ The name meant nothing to Loretta. ‘Anyway, this DS is going round to have a word – see how Mr Fleming claims to have spent New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Won’t he have an alibi?’ Loretta inquired.

  ‘Bound to, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Come on, Loretta, this is progress. This time on Tuesday we’d never even heard of Bob Fleming.’

  ‘I suppose. . .’ Loretta felt suddenly despondent, sure that the mystery surrounding Sandra’s death would never be cleared up.

  Ghilardi, by contrast, was in an ebullient mood. ‘I’m on the trail of Fleming’s money,’ he told her. ‘Not that I give a toss whether he gets it back, I just want to get a clear picture. Thanks for your tip about the bank – I’ve put in a request to the manager to have a look at her account. She may have paid the lot in, you never know. It wasn’t in her luggage, by the way, I’ve checked with the husband –’