by Janet Neel
‘Oh, I did. About £200,000, but £100,000 went to the contractor for Soller, and I had to use £80,000 to finish at Cartina – we had bookings for that in April, and Bill and I agreed that had to be done.’
‘What cash do you have out there?’
‘£17,000 odd,’ he said, suppressing the £20,000 in Geneva. Not even to Sylvia was he going to disclose that. ‘But we need it for the office wages.’
‘I will need to come to Majorca, yes?’
‘Good idea, when we’re organised here. Something I haven’t told you, though. I know where Bill got £80,000 of the cash I had, and that’ll have to go back. It’s Miles Arnold’s money.’
‘Miles?’ she said, incredulously.
He relayed the story as told to him by Miles, following her into the tiny kitchenette where she went abruptly to make more coffee.
‘He thought some of his money was in cash in the safe,’ he said, in conclusion.
‘Because Bill had told him so,’ she observed, and they looked at each other. ‘I wonder how the insurance company will behave? Miss Howard, she did not know? No. Why did he now want cash? Miles, I am talking about.’
‘Well, to put the deposit on a flat for a lady friend, apparently. And cash, so it wasn’t traceable, by the wife, apart from anyone else. It seems it’s all true what you read about MPs, they’re all at it.’
‘For a woman he wanted this cash?’
‘Seemingly. Anyway, Syl, the point is that if he’s telling the truth – and I bet he is – he has papers and he can sue us. So I said to him that we’d try and cash flow him out of the present embarrassment and give him £20,000 in cash so he could do the necessary. There’s no point overlooking someone who can actually sue us. Not if we want to keep the business going.’
She was fidgeting with the cups, her back to him. ‘Perhaps we should not go on with the business if all is so difficult?’
‘You need an income, don’t you?’ he objected.
‘This house is mine. And it is worth at least £1m. And I do not yet know that we can meet these bookings, and if we cannot then I will not go on. Peter Graebner says that I can say it was the business of my husband and I knew nothing.’
‘Sylvia, it is my business too.’
‘You will be able to say you knew also not much because you were not here. Perhaps you will be in a little trouble, but not so much.’
‘Well …’ He was disconcerted. ‘It’s a good business, it’s just that Bill lived off it and took too much cash out. I joined him because I could see it working and making very decent money. Look, Syl, if you and I work it together and get over this hump we could be making serious money in three years.’
She sat elegantly on the end of the big sofa and put her coffee cup down on the mantelpiece. ‘Peter Graebner says I should not be in a hurry, Luke. Already today Margaret says there is another police person wanting to see you. Or me. Not about murder but about the business. A woman, an Inspector Crane. We put her off but tomorrow you must see her. We need to do a cash flow, he says, so I can see how it will be and whether we can do this. You shall have the bookings and the letters file – they are waiting for you with Miss Howard. I will deal with Miles if he makes problems.’
He put his hand on her knee, below the tight skirt, but she was cross and unresponsive, and after a moment he removed the hand and pretended to look for his coffee.
‘I’d done a cash flow of course, but not quite on that basis. After lunch do you?’ He tried and failed to make it sound humorous.
‘No, no, dear Luke, I am sorry to be cross but it is all so difficult and I am not yet knowing what to do for the best.’
‘We’ll work it out,’ he said, reassuringly. ‘Better tomorrow.’
Francesca McLeish turned the key in her own front door, furtive as a burglar. She had been seeing officials at the Department for Education and had realised as she left them that papers she needed for a meeting at Gladstone were still at home. But if her William realised she had come back she could hardly get in and out in ten minutes. The house was silent as she stepped carefully on to the door mat and she remembered that it was Thursday, the day of Susannah’s regular get-together with another young nanny and her little charges. She let out her breath and dropped her coat on the floor.
‘Francesca?’
She gasped in shock and turned to see Matthew Sutherland, standing on the step behind her looking tired and bedraggled, long coat scraping the top of black Doc Martens.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you. Can we talk?’
‘I’m not really here.’ She looked at his face, dejected under the dark red hair. ‘But come in. Tell me all. Did you appear this morning? Have you seen Peter Graebner?’
‘Yes and yes.’ He had followed her downstairs, sat himself at her kitchen table and started to pick at a bit of dried food off the high-chair with obsessive concentration.
‘And?’
‘I pleaded Not Guilty. Trial date set three weeks away. Graebner sent me home; says he can’t have me on drug cases which is mostly what I’ve got, and that he must consult his partners about what to do.’
She considered his profile as he dug at the chair with a blunt knife he had found on the table, and decided soup rather than coffee would help the situation. ‘He can’t really do otherwise, Matt, just at the moment.’
‘Yeah. So then I went to St Mary’s to see if I could find the lad I got the ambulance for.’
‘Why?’
‘To see if I’d been wasting my time.’ He put the knife down, to her relief, and accepted the soup, unseeingly. He still wasn’t looking at her but he was eating hungrily.
‘Did you find him?’
‘Yes. And that’s why I’m here. Among other reasons.’
She brought a bowl for herself and sat beside him in a patch of sunlight.
‘I went to the hospital, see. Typical. Couldn’t find anyone who knew a bloody thing, but then I got talking to a casualty nurse. She remembered him coming in and she had his name. Francis Price.’ He looked at her meaningfully, but she shook her head. ‘Francesca. What happened to Wonderwoman? Your husband, the policeman, is dealing with the murder of someone called William Price. This is one of the sons.’
She gaped at him. ‘What? How do you know? Is he all right?’
‘I knew because I’d talked to Annabelle this morning. I found her outside the Refuge. She’s looking rough. So we had a coffee and I told her my troubles since she didn’t want to tell me hers. She says it’s likely to be Antony Price’s brother – he’s a druggie, and the age is about right. And no, he’s not all right.’
‘Not dead?’
‘Unconscious still, not in good shape, my little girl at the hospital said. She rang a friend on the ward.’
‘I hope you bought her a coffee.’
‘I am seeing her again, yes, since you ask. But the Man’ll want to know. Your husband.’
‘Yes, he will. Did you tell them at the hospital? Didn’t the Met have someone there?’
‘They did and you must be joking. I’m a criminal, they’re not going to listen to me.’ He winced. ‘Jesus Christ, what a bastard thing to happen.’
She opened her mouth to say something consoling and drew his bleakest look. ‘Ignore that,’ he instructed her. ‘Lack of sleep.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Shall I ring John?’
‘You told him the rest?’
‘No. He came in too late and left before I was quite with it. I could not get out of bed in the morning.’ She looked at him.
‘Ring and tell him. And get him to ask Francis Price – if the poor sod ever comes out of it – where he got the drug. That much of it, I mean; my new friends at the hospital said it was a stonking great dose.’
‘That’ll be a technical term, I expect. Where do you think he got it?’
‘His brother.’
She looked at him carefully. ‘Do you know? I mean, did you get that from Annabelle?’
‘No.’
‘Is this pure prejudice?’
‘Pure I don’t say. I am prejudiced against him with good reason. These wankers who beat up women do it because they want to control, and there’s nothing much less controllable than a druggie, particularly if he’s your brother. It would be convenient all round, that much I can gather from Annabelle, if Francis could be postulated to have wandered in, stoned, and kicked the table from under his brutal father.’
She eyed him warily, and he scowled at her. ‘No need to look at me like a social worker. Just ring your old man and tell him where one of his suspects is.’
She picked up the phone but did not dial. ‘We’ve got a bathroom,’ she said, pointedly. ‘Two in fact. And a cloakroom. First door you come to in the hall.’
‘I’ll find it. Do you want me to get out while you ring him, is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You could give it to me straight next time.’
He went off, dropping his coat on the chair behind him, and she rang the Yard and explained the situation to Bruce Davidson. ‘… And tell John I’m sorry,’ she finished, obscurely. ‘I’m sure there’s someone at the hospital from Notting Dale, but they may not make the connection.’ She put the phone down and looked, agonised, at her watch.
‘Can I come back?’ It was Matthew from the hall.
She sat, uneasily, listening to his footsteps coming down. He stopped in the doorway; much slighter than John, she saw, but nearly as tall; square, strong shoulders and the athlete’s poise, weight distributed properly. She rushed to assert herself. ‘Matthew, are you saying that Antony Price murdered his father? And has now tried to kill his brother? You don’t think you’re a bit OTT?’
‘Antony’s a better candidate than his brother. And Annabelle wants keeping an eye on. And I haven’t any work to do.’
‘So you’re going to meddle.’
‘If I hadn’t fucking meddled, your husband would be a suspect short.’
‘Anyway, I’ve told them.’ She considered Matthew anxiously. ‘So you’re not working? Well, you need something else to do as well as assist the police to find a murderer. I mean, my husband has a team of about thirty on this case, all falling over each other, all needing his guidance late into the night, they can’t need you full-time as well.’
‘Bit pissed off, are you, Wonderwoman?’
‘Will you stop calling me that!’ He looked at her, startled, and she felt herself go slowly scarlet. ‘It is you who needs employment, not me,’ she said, trying to get back the ascendancy. ‘Couldn’t you do something useful for the Refuge? I mean, more than what you already do.’
‘Thought of that.’ He shrugged off a layer of clothes and reached a large hand for the sugar. ‘No one has put together the stats for years. They’re all so busy they just write things down and lose them. When they want to do an appeal they pick whichever tear-jerker they’ve got in hand.’
‘You mean instead of a sober set of facts, such as might convince people with real money, like Government?’
‘That’s it. So I could get our statistics into order and on to a proper data base. You’d never know the computer had been invented if you look round the office. They did get the data on about three years ago, but no one uses it.’
‘Mm,’ Francesca said, shiftily. ‘I’m afraid that’s people like my mum.’
‘I’ll teach your mother. Capable lady, for all she over-indulges her children.’
‘You’re looking better.’
His head jerked up, and he looked at her, unsmiling. ‘You know what? You need to distinguish me from your delinquent siblings.’
‘How?’ she asked, coldly, and watched as he went slowly scarlet in his turn.
‘Right,’ he said, tight-lipped, and swallowed his coffee as he got up. ‘I’m going to the Refuge. Now.’
‘Matt. Sorry, but no one attacks my brothers in my presence. Childhood habit. In practice I have to say you are being much more, well, clear-headed and active than they have often managed to be when in trouble.’ She considered his unyielding face and got up to see him off, sadly.
‘I’m not in any position to take offence, fuck it,’ he said, the scarlet fading patchily, ‘but I’m hurt in my feelings.’ He stopped and looked down at her. ‘I’m not coming back till I feel better, either,’ he warned, ‘or not till I’ve got somewhere with the Refuge stuff and done something.’
She looked into the light blue eyes and put a hand on the back of her chair. ‘Will it take very long?’ she asked, trying for a light touch. He didn’t answer, just went on looking at her and she caught her breath. ‘I must go, Matt, the office needs me.’ She let go of the chair and looked round her.
‘Francesca, you’re off on Mondays.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Thursday today, yes? I’ll ring you Monday.’
‘Yes. That’ll be fine. I’ll be here.’ She managed to look up at him again and for a moment they both stood there, then he shrugged himself back into his coat, bent to kiss her, on the lips, and was gone.
John McLeish could still taste the canteen lunch; he had eaten chips, beans, sausages, bacon and two eggs, piled high and eased down with tomato ketchup. Francesca had reacted as if he had asked her to cook something nice with cyanide in it when he asked for this combination at home and it turned out she was dispiritingly right; the days when he could get that lot down without a cross word from his digestive system had gone. It was, however, the news embodied in a note left on his chair with ‘urgent’ stickers all over it that was causing maximum gastric unease. A man he slightly knew, a political journalist, had rung with urgent information about Miles Arnold MP, but had refused to talk to anyone else. McLeish had, when superintendent at Notting Dale, intervened to prevent an over-zealous detective sergeant from pursuing a case against four men – of whom this had been one – who were engaged in behaviour which could have been held to threaten public order only if you were very insecure about your own sexuality. McLeish had stopped the whole business dead in the tracks, ostensibly to protect the Met from being ridiculed in court, but in practice because his sense of justice was offended. The man, who had been the oldest and best known of the group, had been grateful and had tried to pay him back with information. He would have to ring him back; Miles Arnold was a suspect in a murder case without an alibi, but if Arnold was also homosexual everything he thought he knew about human sexuality was way off. Well, that had happened before and no doubt would again, so he reached for the telephone.
He was hailed with éclat, and his full title, no doubt for the benefit of the newsroom, but his informant asked him to wait two minutes until he found a private phone.
‘Thank you for ringing back.’ The deep voice was devoid of any camp mannerisms, and reassuring. ‘I hear that Miles Arnold is in a spot of bother with your lot about that murder in Kensington. He was a consultant to the travel firm, yes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Don’t know anything about that, but one thing you need to know about Miles is that his life’s a bit complicated just now. There’s a woman, runs her own image consultancy. Susie James. Word is that Mrs A doesn’t have any idea, poor girl.’
‘The wife? The poor girl, I mean.’
‘Oh yes. Ms James is a tough little piece, whereas poor Mrs A is rather sweet – you know, local girl married him on the way up.’
McLeish sat silent, trying to work out where this left him and what else he might usefully ask; he didn’t want to have to ring back later.
‘Don’t know if this is useful.’ The man was sounding mildly miffed, and McLeish bestirred himself.
‘I’m sure it is somewhere.’ He considered and decided to risk going on. ‘People in that sort of situation need money, of course.’
‘He should have enough. He’s got about ten consultancies, so-called. But yes, they always seem to need more, don’t they? Sorry, as we speak, it doesn’t sound much, but I wasn’t sure that this sort of information came to you in the ordinary way,
as it were.’
‘Not easily,’ McLeish acknowledged. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re always welcome.’
Which left him, McLeish thought wearily, with the clear duty of seeing Miles Arnold again and putting pressure on him to come up with a better story about where he was on Friday and Saturday nights. The vision of that lively, restless, driving personality sitting at home with the television for two consecutive nights had never been convincing, and now a possible explanation had appeared which could eliminate one suspect, and stop his team wasting a lot of time. To tell Miles Arnold MP that the police were unconvinced by his story was a task for the detective chief superintendent in charge of the investigation, but he was not going to advance directly. He picked up the phone.
‘Chief Whip’s Office.’
‘May I speak to Jim Waters?’ This was a civil servant not a politician he was after, an infinitely experienced and careful professional, younger than himself and a fellow Scot, with a long career as Private Secretary to Chief Whips of both political colours. He arranged to have a drink with the man later that day. He looked round for his team; Davidson had gone off to a hospital for some reason, but he would catch up with him later.
He was standing, fidgeting, in the damp hall by the receptionist’s desk, surrounded by filing cabinets, looking much younger than thirty.
‘Annabelle, sorry to drag you out. It was him. Is him. He’s in a coma.’ He was sounding desperate, right at the edge as he did so often these days, and she wondered how she could ever have thought him such a monolithic tower of strength. Like so many husbands and lovers of the abused women at the Refuge, he was a desperately dependent child when things were not going his way.
‘Antony, come in for a minute. I’m sorry, Jenny, five minutes.’ She pulled him into a decent-sized office, with the inevitable furnishings of weighing machine, blood-pressure machine and battered desk.
‘Very decent office,’ he said, surprised. He looked dazed and pale, and smaller than usual.
‘My senior partner’s. I don’t have an office. Was Francis hurt when he fell?’
‘No, it’s entirely the drugs. Rubbish from a crooked dealer, I expect.’