by Adam Baron
I sat back in my chair and tried to make the expression on my face as benevolent as possible. I reminded myself of a casino bouncer who had orders to beat me up once but who, I could tell, didn’t really want to. He’d looked just like that before he’d kicked the shit out of me.
Mrs Morgan pondered the facts that I had given her, trying to find a way round them but unable to.
‘He must have been,’ she said finally. ‘I suppose he must have been but I never even thought it. I—’
I cut her off.
‘Mrs Morgan, how were sexual relations between yourself and your husband at that time?’
She looked up at me. Her lips tensed and her eyes opened. I knew the police had asked her this question. I wanted to see how she reacted when I asked it. From her expression I knew what she was going to say. She was no longer flustered, she had got hold of it. She knew my tack and had set up a wall against me. She was going to protect her marriage, not let some tin-pot investigator with see-through sincerity take away her memories after a lunatic had taken away her husband. The look on her face told me that she had no idea how her life had arrived at a point wherein a stranger would be grilling her in a cafe, however pleasant, about the quality of the sex she had had with her recently murdered husband.
‘They were fine,’ she said firmly, almost daring me to go on.
I left it there.
I hadn’t enjoyed asking Charlotte the questions I had. The woman had enough to worry about as it was without raking over already dead grass to satisfy the whim of a guilt-stricken Tory MP. There was something she wasn’t telling me though, I knew it. It may have been something mundane and irrelevant but there was something nevertheless. I wanted to know what it was but I had no right to badger her. I could tell it wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. If there was something about this woman I needed to know, then I’d have to find out what it was myself.
I moved into safer waters, asking her if she knew the names of any of Edward’s friends who she thought might be out of the ordinary. She said that most of the friends they had, they had in common. Except for work friends. She didn’t remember Edward mentioning anyone more than anyone else, except for his regular co-pilots and the odd stewardess he used to tease her about. How they were always looking for pilots to marry and he’d loved to have met one who would have retired immediately to the family home and bred him a hoard of kids and not gone swanning off round the world on business all the time. She smiled without any humour in her face, remembering her husband’s jokes.
She said, ‘Maybe he should have; he couldn’t have been killed then, could he?’
I ran out of questions and thanked Mrs Morgan for her time. I asked her how she was coping. She said that her company were being very understanding and that she wasn’t having to deal with clients at the moment, which was a relief. She seemed glad to be off the subject of her husband and we chatted for a minute or two before she took a long look at her watch. I asked the waiter for the bill.
Mrs Morgan excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she came out she had applied some lipstick and done her eyelashes. She looked very beautiful and not a lot older than me. I caught a hint of eau de Issey as she walked past me into the hall, recognizing the scent because it was what Trish in Advertising had been wearing. As we entered the hallway the little bobbing doorman went into overdrive and had Mrs Morgan’s mac on in no time. He told us that it was always a pleasure to see us there and that he hoped we would visit again soon. He held his hands together and beamed at us and I thought he was going to enquire about the kids. I smiled to myself, pressed a pound coin into his hand and followed Mrs Morgan on to the street.
Outside it had got even colder and an ominous cloud hovered over the stately buildings of Exhibition Road like a Zeppelin. I thanked Mrs Morgan again and gave her one of my cards. We shook hands and she walked off in the direction of Kensington Gore. I walked the other way, back to my car.
I wondered if she and her husband had been happy in bed together and decided that no, they hadn’t. Her not wanting to discuss it was more than coyness. Maybe, like Sir Peter, she didn’t want to fail Edward, let him down by admitting that there had been a failure in his life, something which she thought was irrelevant, and nobody’s business but hers. Perhaps she even blamed herself for Edward’s murder, driving him to men after she hadn’t been able to arouse him herself, and her denial of any marital problems was her way of pushing aside her own sense of blame. Maybe she was even involved in what happened to Edward, and she didn’t want anyone to think that her marriage had been anything other than idyllic.
Or perhaps they had been blissfully happy and had had a wonderful love life.
* * *
But then I had another thought, one which wasn’t particularly logical, and of which I was a little ashamed because it was based on an assumption which I didn’t want to make. It went along these lines: why would a woman whose husband had been dead for just under three months make up her face, dab perfume behind her earlobes and walk in the opposite direction to her office at twelve fifteen on a grey morning in late October? I turned round and walked in the direction of Kensington Gore, doing up my jacket and digging my hands into my pockets. Because she always wore make-up? She hadn’t with me. I broke into a light jog. Because she had an important meeting? She told me she wasn’t seeing clients at the moment. I jogged faster until I was almost running.
When I got to the main road I caught sight of Charlotte Morgan walking on the other side of it, towards Knightsbridge. Almost immediately she turned into Kensington Gardens. I crossed over and kept fifty yards behind her as she walked past the round pond and across the park towards the Bayswater Road. I was worried she’d see me but she didn’t look back. Crossing the Bayswater Road, she walked up Leinster Road and then turned into a small street on her right. I sprinted to the top of the street and took a very careful look round the corner. Leinster Mews. I was just in time to see one of the cottage doors being held open for her and Mrs Morgan step inside.
I sprinted back across Kensington Gardens and stuck my key into the door of the Mazda. I tried the ignition – nothing. Again – very little. Once again – more this time but my impatience made me pump the accelerator and I nearly flooded the engine. I waited. I made myself count to a hundred. I tried again. The engine took with the depth and enthusiasm of a man dragged out of a river who finally responds to the kiss of life. I pulled it out of the side street, cut into the traffic, much to the annoyance of a cab driver with a surprising command of old Saxon English, and sped past the Albert Hall. I drove through the park, back into Bayswater and turned up Leinster Road.
I sat in the Mazda at the far end of Leinster Mews keeping an eye on number 8. I booted up the camera and hoped I hadn’t missed her. I waited about an hour, the camera on the dashboard, thinking that perhaps she had just popped in to collect a girlfriend for lunch or something and I was simply a sleazebag who was wasting his time.
But then the door opened.
A man stepped out. A man in a suit with a briefcase in his hand. I got a shot of him. The man looked around the mid-forties mark, maybe younger. Yes, a little younger. He had full, dark brown hair and large, steel-rimmed glasses. I thought he was just going to leave but he turned back into the doorway and a woman in a dressing gown met him halfway and kissed him. I got that too. The man kissed her back, hard, biting into her bottom lip, holding her head in his hands like he was going to shoot a basket. He grinned, a full, confident grin which told of pleasure recently enjoyed and already anticipated. The woman pulled him to her again but he broke off from her. Then he turned and walked over to a dark blue Jaguar parked at the top end of the Mews, which he got into, tossing the briefcase on the passenger seat beside him. I wrote down the plate number.
I had no idea who the man was.
The woman was Charlotte Morgan.
The door of the cottage shut. I put my camera down on the passenger seat. The Jag pulled off and I followed it out on to Lein
ster Road. I followed it along Bayswater and down Park Lane. I kept three or four cars back even though I didn’t have to be careful because this man had no idea who I was. We drove down Grosvenor Place, past Victoria and along Birdcage Walk. Then the Jag turned into Parliament Square and skirted round St Stephen’s Tower. After another right it turned into a gate which announced that it was private, with no access to members of the public. A barrier was raised in front of it and then the Jag disappeared. I stopped at a red light and looked at the gateway into which the car had gone.
It was the car park used by Members of Parliament.
Part Two
Chapter Eight
I called Andy Gold from a phone box but I couldn’t get hold of him and there was no one else I could think of who would be willing to run a vehicle registration check for me. I wasn’t too concerned; I was pretty sure I could find out who the man in the Jag was on my own. I hung up and dialled the daytime number Sir Peter Morgan had given me.
Sir Peter wasn’t at the Treasury, he was at Westminster today. I called the number I was given and reached his secretary and eventually convinced her that her boss would want to talk to me. I then arranged to see Sir Peter in his office in thirty-five minutes. He suggested a later time but I impressed upon him the need to see him soon, and he agreed. I hung up and then walked round to the entrance gate the Jag had driven through.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, in broad Texan to the uniformed man on the gate. ‘Could you help me?’
‘If I can, sir,’ the man replied. He had been sitting in his booth reading the Sun but he stood up and approached the window.
‘I was just having an argument with my wife,’ I explained. ‘Shirley-Anne. You see I could have sworn I just saw the Prime Minister drive in here, in a blue-coloured Jaguar car, but she says it wasn’t him.’
‘And I’m afraid she’d be right, sir,’ the guard said. ‘Although Mr Lloyd might make it one day. No, the Prime Minister has a driver in any case.’
‘So you’re sure it wasn’t John Major?’
‘That was Graham Lloyd, sir, right Party, wrong man. And anyway, sir, John Major hasn’t been PM for …’
‘Was that who that was? Damn!’ I leant forward. ‘Do me a favour,’ I said, taking a quick look back over my shoulder. ‘Don’t tell that to Shirley-Anne.’
I could feel the hangover now. It was catching me like a favourite in a steeplechase making its way through the field. I fed six twenty-pence pieces into the meter which was guarding my car and looked around for somewhere to get a quick bite to eat. I found a coffee bar and drank one of those Californian multi-vit drinks that really did make me feel a bit better – for the moment. I ate a samosa and then had one of those little Portuguese custard tart things with an espresso. London, a hundred different countries packed into one traffic jam. As I ate I wondered what the hell was going on in the life of Charlotte Morgan. I had mixed feelings about having caught her out; I was glad the case had started to move but it didn’t make me happy to have my grubby suspicions confirmed. I didn’t like to think of her having anything to do with her husband’s death.
And then I had another thought. Sir Peter. Was I being made a fool of? I was soon to find out. I looked at a copy of the Telegraph which somebody had left behind, and read that Boris Yeltsin had had another heart attack and that a man with an unpronounceable name who I had never heard of before was in charge of the country. This worried me. A country with a lot of nuclear weapons should be run by someone you’ve heard of. I paid for my lunch and decided to leave the Telegraph where I’d found it. I didn’t want to give Sir Peter the wrong idea.
* * *
‘You’re resigning?’ the MP said, his mouth opening a little to demonstrate his surprise. We were sitting in his office, him in his discreet power chair backed by a panorama of the Thames and St Thomas’s Hospital, and me opposite, my left foot sitting on my right knee. ‘But you’ve only being working for two or three days!’
Sir Peter was shocked, and annoyed with me. But that was OK.
‘I like knowing what I’m doing,’ I told him. ‘I don’t like playing to someone else’s agenda. I got enough of that on the force.’ I settled back into the chair but didn’t get too comfortable.
‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Sir Peter’s fingers spread wide apart and his head moved forward towards me, leaving his shoulders where they were.
‘Fine,’ I said. And I got up to go.
‘Please,’ Sir Peter stood up with me, ‘won’t you at least tell me what this is about?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘I don’t want to tell you because you didn’t hire me for that, and if you had told me that is what you wanted me to do I would never have agreed to work for you. That sort of thing isn’t my line. Does that make any sense?’
‘No,’ Sir Peter protested.
‘Fine,’ I said again. ‘But I don’t believe you.’
This time I made it to the office door but Sir Peter took my arm before I got it open.
‘All right,’ he said, his voice now void of any false hurt.
‘All right. I know what you’re talking about but, please, let me explain.’
I sighed.
‘Please,’ Sir Peter said.
* * *
‘I didn’t hire you to snoop on my political enemies.’ We were back at the desk. ‘Anyway, Graham’s one of us. Not that that means a damn thing these days.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me about him?’
‘Because I wasn’t sure about it. I thought I was just being paranoid, but that if you came up with anything, well, so be it. ‘I’m amazed it only took this long.’
‘It was a fluke,’ I said. ‘How did you find out about it?’
‘Well,’ Sir Peter said, ‘I introduced them. At one of those diplomatic things Ministers have to go to and hate, but which their friends and family adore. Edward was away on long haul and I ran into Charlotte in one of those ghastly restaurants in Notting Hill and asked her if she wanted to come along to the Portuguese embassy with my wife and myself.’
‘And she met him there?’
‘Yes. It was about eight months ago. They hit it off but I didn’t think anything of it. Who wouldn’t hit it off with Charlotte? She’s a beautiful woman and she works in PR. Hitting it off with people is her job.’
‘So why did you suspect they were seeing each other?’
‘Coincidence, I suppose. Teddy and I met for lunch one day, about six weeks before he was killed. He told me that he and Charlotte were having problems. He didn’t seem to think they were too serious, but he did say that she seemed quite off with him. I said that every marriage must be like that at some point.’
‘I’m sure they are.’
‘Yes. Anyway, it just happened that in a cab on the way back to the Treasury I saw Graham and Charlotte together on the Mall and Edward’s words struck me. Oh, they weren’t doing anything, they were just walking along. They could have run into each other and remembered meeting before, or Charlotte could have got Graham’s number and phoned him on a work basis. But there was something about them. It was nothing blatant but it was something. Graham Lloyd is married, you know?’
‘I had assumed that he was.’
‘I have become adept at reading body language over the years. I’ve had to. It helped, of course, that Charlotte and Graham didn’t know that anyone was watching them – not that they were doing anything to give themselves away. I just had the feeling.’
‘So when your brother was murdered, why didn’t you tell the police?’
‘For the same reason I didn’t tell you, only more so. I wasn’t sure he was having an affair with Charlotte. I didn’t want them bothering him if I was only imagining it. Even if I was sure it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and if the papers had got hold of it – Christ! I couldn’t tell them and I didn’t want to tell you. I wanted to see if you came up with it yourself.’
I sighed. I really love chasing around finding out things that my clients
could have told me before I even started.
‘There seems to be a lot of things you can’t tell me. Can I be certain that’s the lot?’
‘Yes,’ he said, relieved. ‘And I’m sorry, I really am.’
‘So. Are you going to tell the police about it now?’
‘I suppose I’ll have to.’
‘Which won’t hurt your corner at all,’ I said. ‘Will it?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Him being a pro-European, and you being as sceptical about Europe as Ian Paisley is about a united Ireland…’
‘Now look here!’ Sir Peter stood up. ‘If you think for one minute that where the murder of my brother is concerned I would attempt to gain any sort of political advantage, then you couldn’t be more wrong. How dare you?’
‘Just to see what you’d say,’ I admitted. ‘You can see how I might think it. Get me to catch Lloyd in the act, maybe get some pictures off me which get leaked to the Mail. They’re on your side, aren’t they, on Europe?’
Sir Peter tried hard to suppress his outrage at my suggestion.
‘If that was the case I could just have told the police of my suspicions first off, couldn’t I? They would have revealed the truth just as you did, and I wouldn’t have had to leak it to the papers, the police would have done it for me themselves. No?’
He had a point. Also, his anger did seem genuine. All in all I was inclined to believe that he wasn’t using me in his bid to keep the jewel of Britain firmly entrenched behind her silver sea, away from nasty foreign hands. I decided not to tell him about the film I had though.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I apologize for doubting your motives. But if you had told me of your suspicions we wouldn’t have had to have this conversation. Now, do you want to go to the police with this?’