Jones, on the other hand, held Stevens in great respect. She had saved him from one or two dubious investments and brought into line those company owners who thought they could take his money and do what they liked with it. Jones admired her choice of car, too: like him, she drove a less expensive vehicle than she could afford, avoiding attention by not flaunting her status.
Warren strained to hear what was being said but Jones spoke in low tones until the heathen videoman, as Jones called him behind his back, gave up and took the lift that had stood open and waiting for him for several seconds. The conversation between Jones and Stevens was, though, as Warren feared.
“Next week I want you to crawl through Warren’s books,” Jones said quietly but deliberately. “I think he is concealing something serious.”
“You think he is hiding profits from you?” Stevens replied, more as a statement than a question.
“That, or he is in big trouble and manufactured this year’s profit to appease me. I suspect the latter.”
Steven nodded her agreement as they walked towards the lift that Warren had taken up. It had returned already. Warren must have considerately pressed the ground floor button as he vacated it, probably hoping that the lift’s reappearance would cut short the conversation. Stevens and Jones moved towards it in silence. Foster leaned on his brush and watched. The security guard was heading back towards the sweeper.
It was the last time that anyone was prepared to admit to having seen the victim alive.
Chapter 2
The closing hymn at the compact parish church lacked something of its usual fervour that Sunday evening. Sarah Miles, the organist, normally picked the hymns. It was one job fewer for the vicar to do so he was happy to delegate the task.
The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is ended was Ray Jones’s favourite hymn but Miles could see, in the little mirror giving her a view of the congregation, the empty space that he usually occupied religiously.
She glanced several times into her mirror during the service as if to contradict what her eyes had already seen over and over again. It was rare, indeed, for Jones to miss Sunday evensong. Not even business prevented his ritual appearance.
Miles had seen Jones on Friday morning in town and he had remarked casually as they parted: “See you on Sunday.”
Miles pulled out the oboe stop instead of the cor anglais. Flustered, she selected a 32ft pipe instead of a 16ft, giving the tune a deeper tone. She always played the hymn as Jones wanted it, as a celebration of the day; now it sounded like a requiem for the ending of it.
“Don’t worry so,” the Rev John Thornley told her after the service. “I’m sure Mr Jones was held up on some unexpected business. You did tell me he was going to Nottingham earlier today, as I recall.”
He did not wish to be rude to Miles – her services as an organist were too valuable to him – but she did fuss over nothing. She was 50, and if anything looked older. Had she been in her teens people would have thought her anorexic.
Thornley was not anxious to get involved in a conversation appertaining to Raymond Jones. Miles could blow hot and cold on any topic, particularly so where Jones was concerned.
Miles had already virtually cleared the church by the simple expedient of playing the Hallelujah Chorus on full organ as the closing voluntary. It was her time honoured method, on the odd occasions when she wanted to get away quickly, of discouraging the little knots of people who gathered in the aisle after evensong and expected a musical accompaniment to their gossip.
Finding no sympathy with the vicar, she bustled off to her home just 100 yards away from the gate. Miles rang Jones breathlessly as soon as she was through the door, without even removing her hat. The rather flat voice belonging to the object of her concern answered on the fourth ring.
“This is Ray Jones. Please leave a message stating your name, your number and when you rang. This computer occasionally crashes, wiping out voice messages, so if I don’t respond please ring again tomorrow.”
“Ray, it’s Sarah. Where on earth are you? It’s not like you to miss evensong. I’m worried sick about you. Ring me whatever time you get back.”
But Jones did not ring back that evening. Miles tried again at 9 pm and again at 2 am, when she woke from her fitful sleep. Each time she left a similar but increasingly frantic message in vain.
She awoke with a start. It was 9.30 am. She would normally have been awake for the past two hours. She rang Jones’s office. No, he had not been in yet but that was nothing unusual. He would call in during the day and they would let him know that she had rung.
Miles left another message on the answering machine installed in the computer in Jones’s flat. Perhaps the wretched machine had crashed and he had not got her messages. That afternoon there was still no sign of Jones.
Finally Miles rang Jones’s housekeeper.
“I’m due in tomorrow morning,” she responded. “I’ll be there at ten o’clock.” No, she wasn’t prepared to go round that evening.
Miles begged, pleaded, cajoled. Frantically she began to threaten the unyielding housekeeper, who finally realised there was to be no reasoning with the infatuated women and put down the phone.
Miles rang the police. No, they were not going to break in. Their method of discouraging persistent callers was to leave the phone lying on the desk while they got on with their paperwork until the sound of the voice at the other end abruptly ceased.
That was why the body of Raymond Jones, businessman, entrepreneur, finger-in-every-pie man and staunch churchgoer, was not found until Tuesday morning.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Extract from Dead Money by Rodney Hobson
Holy Murder Page 15