by Janet Neel
‘They didn’t tell you? The lads, I mean?’ She looked away from the window, to his face, then studied his desk, shoulders rigid. ‘He’s in hospital. Dave, I mean. Complete breakdown. This was six months ago.’
‘The bastard.’ The words were impelled out of him, her head jerked back convulsively and they stared at each other. ‘Couldn’t even face the responsibility for what he’d done, so he ducks out and hides in a bin. Cath, what were you doing? ’
‘I thought it was me. I thought it was my fault.’
He sat speechless, looking into her small pale face.
She stared back at him, sniffed convulsively, and drew in a huge breath through her mouth like a child, and he felt an appalling rush of tenderness. It is true, he thought, as he got up clumsily, banging his knee on the coffee table, and bent over, weight on the table, to enfold her in a cuddle, it does feel as if the heart is melting; it isn’t a literary statement.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he heard himself saying, as he rubbed her back comfortingly while she wept and snuffled on his shoulder. ‘I have to get off this table,’ he said, when he felt able. ‘It’ll break and I’ll never be able to explain to anyone.’ He was relieved to feel her ribs convulse, and managed to get himself arranged on a chair alongside her, so that he could go on holding her.
‘I can’t believe anyone would choose that table for a spot of light relief,’ she said, in his ear, and he kissed her. She pushed him away, gently, and he watched while she found a handkerchief and a mirror and a comb and put herself to rights. She looked, even with eyes gone small with weeping and a red nose, powerfully attractive, and he rearranged his jacket self-consciously.
‘Cath,’ he said, telling himself he could not possibly leave her in this state, ‘I’ll buy you supper and take you home.’
She gave him a watery smile and shook her head. ‘You’ll be expected, surely.’
‘No. Frannie is … well, she’s out.’
This was not true, but he was righteously cross with Francesca. She had told him that morning she was spending much of the day with Matthew Sutherland, sorting out the Refuge data for the article he was writing on the Domestic Violence Act. He had objected on the basis that she was already overloaded and over-tried, and what about playing with William instead, only to be reminded that Susannah was, by long prearrangement, taking William home with her to show her mother in Durham. Well, if she was going to wear herself out doing wholly unnecessary Good Works with young Sutherland there was no reason for him to struggle to get back. In any case he was not going to leave Catherine in such distress.
‘Matt. It’s six o’clock; I haven’t done anything about food and John said he would be back. Well, he hasn’t been back any time in the last week, but he may be.’
‘It’s all right. I have to collect Francis.’ He kissed her neck and rolled over, putting his feet on the floor with a thump. ‘Want a shower?’
‘Please.’ She scooped her watch off the floor – niceties like bedside tables were not in Matt’s furnishing canon – and made for the bathroom, suppressing the wish for her own towel and soap. This was only the second time they had managed to get back into bed together since the first time, just over a week ago. Her house was full of nanny and child and window cleaner and man come to repair the boiler, and his flat was full of Francis, or had been, until he had recovered enough to be posted to a library, under the supervision of another friend. Francesca, water drumming on her back, remembered suddenly and precisely a time when she had been just older than Matt, in a flat in Washington, having an affair with a married American politician. There had been a great deal more planning, telephoning, and promises than action, because of the difficulties of finding somewhere out of sight of flat-mates, wives and gossip columnists. Her present situation was uncomfortably familiar; instead of the press it was necessary to avoid any members of the Metropolitan police force, among whom gossip raged as freely as in any girls’ school. She stepped out of the bath and stared anxiously into the dulled mirror while she combed her hair.
Matt met her at the door with a cup of tea and she took it gratefully. He was very good at small attentions like this for all his ferocity. She had understood from the first time in his bed that he knew exactly what he was doing and that any perception of herself as experienced Older Woman gently educating a younger man was wide of the mark. Someone – or several someones – had been there before her. He had admitted, matter-of-factly, that he had started at fourteen and accumulated a lot of valuable experience by the time he left New Zealand, never mind whatever else he had managed in three years in London. It was all of a piece with the rest of him, she thought, wryly; a high-quality well-trained article in any field.
‘You want the bathroom?’
‘In a minute. I need my cup of tea. You look good.’
She did, she did, she acknowledged guiltily. This affair had removed her usefully from what she was beginning to see as an endless slog of motherhood, mortgage and struggles to maintain a career. No joy in it, all the effort going into just keeping all the balls in the air at once, as if the whole desired panoply of husband, child, home and career had been some particularly dreary examination course.
‘What are you going to do with Francis?’ she asked.
‘I have to keep him another six days; he’s on antibiotics and shouldn’t travel. And I’ve got something to do for Peter – yeah, he’s decided I may as well work since I’m being paid.’
She put her arm round him protectively. ‘Your boss is doing his best, Matt. And I have reminded my … reminded John to have a word with Notting Dale, to see what’s what. I know it’s difficult.’
‘Impossible. I need to work. It’s what I know how to do. If not as a solicitor then somewhere.’
‘I’d feel the same, Matt,’ she said, acknowledging very clearly the subtext, knowing that she too had always set more store by the work than the lovers.
‘I didn’t mean…’
‘Yes, you did. Don’t look like that. Anyone I’ve ever been involved with – or would fancy – puts the work first. It just makes living a bit difficult sometimes.’
‘Hey.’ He leant over and kissed her, gently, then with some urgency and she relaxed against him, laughing.
‘You’re showing off.’
‘Wanna bet?’
‘No, Matt. I must go home. I don’t want to run into Francis.’ She stood up and he wrapped his arms round her waist, and she bent to kiss the dark red hair. ‘Ring me?’
An ambulance was pulling away from the big house in Kensington Church Street as McLeish and Davidson arrived and half the neighbours were in the street, or hanging out of windows to watch the show. It had finally stopped raining but it was a dark evening with promise of a further downpour. They headed through the small crowd up the steps, and two young constables fell back to let them through.
‘We had to get her away, sir.’ It was a CID sergeant from Notting Dale. ‘We got the call and as soon as I saw where we were I called the Yard but we couldn’t wait to get the lady away. She’d fallen down the stairs and got a dunt to her head, or I’d have waited. Maybe a broken arm, maybe some ribs as well. I couldn’t wait.’
McLeish opened his mouth to snap at the man to stop bloody apologising, then got a grip on himself. He had just eaten the first two courses in an Italian restaurant near where Catherine lived, had seen her relax and the colour come back to her face. When the call came, they had just agreed that he would drive her home and have a cup of coffee, and he had been in a state between overwhelming desire for her and sheer terror at the thought of the consequences.
Davidson had found him; he had left the number of the restaurant with the team, thinking it better to do that than have them ring Francesca and worry her by assuming he was already home. He had offered to send a car, but McLeish had refused and dropped Catherine on the doorstep collecting a chaste and sisterly kiss for his trouble. He was feeling sick from disappointment and was having trouble concentrating on the proble
m in hand.
‘What stairs? Oh, from the flat above? She fell?’
The sergeant closed a half-open door into the hall firmly. ‘She said she’d been pushed, sir, or rather thrown down the stairs. By someone she couldn’t see, who was behind her when she was leaving the flat. She kept on saying it.’
They looked up the stairs, silently. There was a little landing outside the flat off which the door opened and there was no cover at all, nothing anyone could shelter behind.
‘The light has gone, sir. No bulb.’
Now that changed the situation radically. With no light overhead someone could have stood outside the flat door in the shadows, waiting.
‘No bulb?’
‘That’s right, sir, you can see.’ The sergeant shone a powerful flashlight on the shade.
It might be of course that someone had taken the bulb out and realised they didn’t have a spare, but it was so dark on the stairs that it was unlikely anyone would have tolerated the situation for more than the time it took to get to the shops.
‘Who found her? Or did she ring you?’
‘No, sir. Her son – no, sorry, stepson, Dr Antony Price. He’s in the little office place; I knew you’d want to see him.’
‘Anyone else here?’
‘There’s myself and one of my lads, and two uniformed.’
‘Thank you very much. You’re new, I think, since I was at Notting Dale? Sorry you had the trouble.’
The sergeant, young and keen, hesitated. ‘Sir, could it have been just some chancer who knew the house was upset? Nothing to do with … well, your case.’
‘Any sign of robbery?’
‘No. No, but I wondered was he hoping to steal her keys and do the flat?’
It was not impossible but it was unlikely. McLeish, always reluctant to discourage, said he thought it would be better to assume the attack was connected to his case and dismissed the man, noting his name. He turned back to Bruce Davidson who had summoned a scene-of-crime squad on his mobile and was standing stock still in the hall, looking at the darkened stairs.
‘He could have followed her down the stairs and finished her off, John.’
‘I thought the same.’
‘I frightened him off, I think.’
McLeish turned, the hairs on his neck prickling, to see Antony Price in the doorway from the office. It was a bad light but the man looked ill, thinner, and very tired.
‘When I got here I saw the lights flash in the hall. I rang the bell and nothing happened. Then I heard someone calling so I used my key and when I got in there was Sylvia – on the floor.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Took a quick look at her; she was conscious but bleeding from the head and her eyes were a bit crossed. So I called an ambulance. Then I thought about where I was and what, well, what’s been happening, and I called the police. I rang 999 again. I’ve got your number somewhere but I didn’t think of you.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘Yes. That someone threw her downstairs.’
‘Using those words?’
‘Yes. You’ll find that her injuries are what you’d get if you came down a long flight like that. Possibly a cracked skull, broken arm, ribs I think.’
The front door bell rang and Davidson admitted a doctor and half a scene-of-crime squad. He could be heard explaining what the problem was. McLeish saw that two of his team at the Yard had got there and set them to finding Luke Fleming, Miles Arnold and Francis Price, as being the injured Mrs Price’s closest family and associates, and the most likely candidates to have pushed her downstairs. And Margaret Howard, who would be invaluable.
He installed Antony Price with Bruce Davidson in the room near the office which was used as a waiting-room and turned the office into the headquarters for the scene-of-crime squad who were clattering about, changing and observing how unusual it was to find yourself in the same place again two weeks later.
‘It’s not a death this time,’ McLeish observed, more sharply than he had meant to, achieving a disciplined, reproachful silence which left him no option but to retreat. He decided he would catch a breath of air and work out what to do with Antony Price.
People were still loitering in the damp evening, drawn by the presence of three police cars, but they moved on under his disapproving stare. Except one, who stepped forward, so that his hair showed a rich dark red under the street lights.
‘Chief Superintendent.’
‘Mr Sutherland.’ McLeish walked down the steps.
‘What are you doing here?’ The young man was very pale and the big hands were clenched. ‘Do you have Antony Price? … Have you arrested him?’
‘Why would we have done that?’
Matt Sutherland cast a hunted glance at the uniformed constable hovering well within earshot.
‘Have you something to tell me, Matt?’ McLeish had meant to continue as formally as he had started, but it was too like dealing with one of Francesca’s younger brothers in one of their many and varied spots of bother.
‘Yes, I do. I must. She wasn’t dead, was she?’
‘Matthew.’
‘Right. Sorry. I’d rather not run into him. Antony Price, I mean. But I must talk to you.’
McLeish took him downstairs, into the kitchen, now immaculately clean and obviously unused.
‘Is this where…?’
‘Yes. It is also the only room not occupied. Now, what is it you have to say?’
Matthew’s colour had come back; he was still tense but he was determined and had his mind ordered. ‘I’d been to try and find Antony Price – I wanted to talk to him.’
‘What about?’
‘He’d given his brother cash. This morning. When Francis had been off drugs for eleven days and Antony well knew that. Francis is a good lad, he walked round for a bit, then he gave the cash to a mate who is helping me look after him. The mate bought foodie things – recovering druggies eat all the time – and stuck the rest in the Post Office. But that was deliberate, Antony knows better, he’s a doctor. So I wanted to know what the fuck he thought he was doing. So when I got back from … from where I was I went to look for him.’
‘But you didn’t find him?’
‘Not where he lives. So I came on here – it’s more or less on the way home. And I saw him go in and I was deciding whether I’d wait half an hour, see if he came out, or I’d barge in. Then the ambulance came and this stretcher was carried out, and I couldn’t see who was on it. Then I heard the policeman say “she” to the ambulance men, so I knew it wasn’t him. Antony.’
‘Why didn’t you come in straightaway when the police arrived?’
‘I was going to, but … well … I didn’t want to talk to one of the Notting Dale CID.’
‘I’m going to take you to the Yard and get all this in due form, Matt. But just tell me, did you see anyone come out of the house after Antony Price went in? Remember there is a side entrance through into the garden.’
‘No one. I thought of that … I watched. No one at all.’
13
Wednesday, 27 April
‘How is she this morning?’ John McLeish decided to ignore Davidson’s barely concealed dissent and disapproval.
‘Nae bad, considering. Broken arm, bruising, but they’re going to let her home today.’ Davidson was looking tired – well, they all were. He himself had got to bed at 2 a.m., sneaking in hopefully beside Francesca who had turned away in her sleep, snarling in protest. It was to be hoped that Davidson had fared better wherever he had been.
‘I’ve asked for a meeting at nine.’
‘So I hear.’ Davidson finished his coffee and looked into his empty cup. ‘I take it we’ve somebody watching out for Dr Price?’
‘He’s operating this morning. He’s safe.’
Davidson looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time that morning. ‘Ye’re giving him rope to hang himself?’
‘He didn’t push Mrs Price downstairs.’
B
ruce Davidson’s expression did not change. ‘He called the ambulance.’
‘Yes. And he didn’t need to do that. He could have left her. Or finished her off if he thought she’d identified him. He had no reason to suppose anyone else knew he was there. Matt Sutherland’s presence was entirely fortuitous. But he called an ambulance and made sure she could breathe.’
‘He said Mrs Price had asked him to come round. He would have assumed, surely, that she’d told someone.’
It was the argument of the night before, replayed, and John McLeish wished he had maintained a stern chief superintendentlike silence. He was relieved to hear the footsteps in the corridor which heralded the arrival of his meeting. He rose to greet Catherine Crane and saw Bruce Davidson’s wooden disapproval change to sheer surprise.
‘I’ve asked DI Crane from the Fraud Squad to join us at these meetings,’ McLeish said generally, when they were all sitting down. ‘They have an active interest in the affairs of Price Fleming Limited.’ And since no murderer had emerged from two weeks of investigation by C Division, all sources of assistance must be brought in if only as a necessary preliminary to dropping the case. ‘Catherine, would you tell us what your people are doing?’
‘Certainly.’ She was wearing a navy suit with a short skirt, four inches above her knees, and more when she sat down, with a V-neck silk blouse and long collar-less jacket, and every man at the meeting was watching her. ‘I have a meeting today with the accountants, who are going over the company’s business.’
‘Who instructed them?’ McLeish asked, for clarification.
‘Mr Fleming and Mrs Price, as executors.’
‘What information would we get from these accountants, Catherine?’ Bruce Davidson was going to make it clear to all at this meeting that she and he were old friends.
‘Whether the company is solvent. Whether it can go on trading.’
‘And does that do anything for us?’
‘It tells you how much trouble the late Mr Price was in – we were already investigating, remember – and therefore how much grief his fellow directors, Mrs Price and Mr Fleming, had coming. And, of course, the MP, Mr Arnold.’