Sleight Malice

by Vicki Tyley

  Fergus tucked into his breakfast, motioning for her to do the same. As appetizing as it looked, her stomach and nostrils weren’t quite ready. The treacly-thick coffee she swallowed in three gulps, the caffeine like an adrenaline shot.

  Then she noticed her keys sitting on the bench. “Don’t tell me I went out last night.”

  His mouth full, he shook his head, continuing to chew. He swallowed. “I borrowed them this morning, only so I could let myself back in when I came back from the shops.”

  “Oh.” Another eloquent response.

  The phone rang. She let it ring. Whoever it was would fare better talking to the answering machine anyway.

  “Desley, its Helen Escott. I thought you should know that I’ve heard from Paul. He wouldn’t tell me where he was, just that he was okay and not to worry…”

  CHAPTER 27

  Monday morning. Desley had survived the weekend, but had Helen Escott? Why wasn’t she returning her phone calls?

  Unable to focus on the project on hand, a revamp of a new client’s existing website, she checked her emails yet again, pressing the send-and-receive button on the off chance a new email had arrived in the last nanosecond. Nothing. She then sent herself a test message, the email equivalent of checking a phone for dial tone. No problems there.

  Abandoning her computer, she gathered up her mobile phone, shoulder bag and keys. She could ill afford the time, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her work until she had spoken to Helen and assured herself everything was okay. For all Desley knew, Paul Escott had done more than contact his estranged wife by phone. Alcohol changed people. What if he had been on a drinking binge, morphing from the sober teddy bear Helen once thought he was to some raging monster capable of God knows what. Or not.

  Forty minutes later, her overactive imagination in check, she turned into Helen’s street. She slowed but then sped up again when she recognized the car backing out of the Escott’s driveway. What were the police doing there? What had happened?

  She drove on, monitoring the unmarked police car in her rear view mirror. Pulling into a park four houses down, she stayed in her car until she was sure it was clear. Once out of the vehicle, she didn’t dawdle, marching straight across the street and up to number 58. Except for it being a brighter day, the weatherboard bungalow looked just the same.

  Not so, Helen Escott. In the week since Desley last saw her, she had aged ten years, the lines around her sunken eyes etched deep. Even her mahogany mane, tied back from her face, seemed to have lost its vitality.

  “Piss off!”

  Desley’s jaw dropped. Not exactly the welcome she had expected. The door slammed in her face. “You weren’t answering my calls or emails,” she called through the door. “I just wanted to make sure you and the boys were okay.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I phoned you to tell you about Paul being in contact because I thought you genuinely cared. Silly me thought if you were a friend of Laura’s then you had to be okay.”

  “I don’t get it, Helen. I do care.”

  “What’s not to get?” The pitch of Helen’s voice hit screech point. “I call you and the police turn up.”

  “No!” For the second time in as many days, she was being accused of sicking the police onto someone. “Helen, I didn’t tell anyone about your phone call. I swear the police being here had nothing to do with me. You have to believe me.”

  “Why should I?”

  Good point. She and Helen were little more than strangers. “What would I gain by snitching to the police?” She coughed, her throat scratchy from having to shout.

  “You knew Paul hated Ryan for what he did to us.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I think he’s capable of murder.”

  “Well, the police do. And someone told them he had been in contact. You were the only one that I told. Now go away. Leave me alone.”

  Not knowing what else she could do, Desley retreated. If Helen was telling the truth and the only person she had told about Paul’s phone call was her, how had the police found out? Only two possibilities came to mind and she didn’t like either of them. One: the police had Helen’s phone or Desley’s or both tapped. Two: Fergus had told them. She had almost forgotten he had been there when the answering machine picked up Helen’s call.

  She came to an abrupt halt. A gangly teenage boy on a skateboard screamed past her, two fingers thrust in the air. She turned around, took two steps and stopped again. She wanted to warn Helen about the possibility of her phone being tapped, but if it wasn’t, it meant Helen was right and she had been the source of the leak. Intention didn’t come into it.

  She headed back to her car. Phone tapping or double-crossing, she couldn’t risk blundering in without all the facts. She could only pray that underhanded police methods were to blame. Whatever, she needed to talk to Fergus. And if they were tapping landlines, then email and mobile phones wouldn’t be secure either.

  On the way home, she rang Fergus, leaving what she hoped wasn’t too cryptic a message: “When you can spare the time, I need a few questions answered about the final layout of your website before I upload it.” Cryptic because having signed everything off days before, his website was already live. “I should be home by eleven, so anytime after that.” That would give her time to check her phone for obvious bugs, not that she knew what to look for.

  But all thoughts of phone taps were vanquished the instant she pulled into her driveway and saw her front door ajar. She certainly hadn’t left it that way; she never left it open. What’s more, it was fitted with one of those automatic locking latches. She knew; she had locked herself out on more than one occasion.

  Leaving her car parked in the middle of the driveway, she approached the house, her heart thumping so hard it hurt. She nudged the door with her foot and stepped backwards. “Hello, anyone there?” she called out, feeling stupid and not at all brave. As if any burglar in his right mind would reply.

  She forced herself to move. A strong metallic taste filled her mouth as she stepped into the hall, her pulse off the Richter scale. Sticking close to the walls, she peered around the edge of each doorway. Her breathing had only started to steady when she realized she hadn’t checked upstairs.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, she took a deep breath and grabbed the handrail. She needed all the support she could get. Another breath. Coming, ready or not, she thought. She meant herself.

  At the top of the stairs, she stood rooted to the floor, every muscle tensed. A delicate honey scent, a leftover of her morning shower, mingled with the dryness of the landing’s wool carpet. The only sounds came from outside, distant traffic, a pigeon cooing to its mate.

  Somehow she persuaded her feet to move. She did okay until she neared the doorway to her en suite, visions of the shower scene in Psycho flashing into her mind. She almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. She could see straight through her shower curtain, a clear glass panel, and no one could mistake the orange-billed fluorescent-pink rubber ducky staring out at her as a body. She breathed out, a throttled giggle escaping.

  Still on edge, but convinced that whoever had been there was no longer there, she returned downstairs to check what had been taken. Except after checking and double-checking each room, she couldn’t find anything missing. Her computer, printer and scanner were as she left them. The television, DVD player and recorder, and CD player in the living room hadn’t been touched. Yet someone had been there, that she knew. She felt tainted, as if it were her body and not just her space that had been violated.

  Then she did what she should have done in the first place: she called the police to report the break-in. With nothing more to be done until either the police or Fergus turned up, she went to put her car away. Letting herself out into the garage, she pressed the green button on the wall near the door and ducked under the opening tilt-a-door.

  It took her a second to reali
ze what she was seeing, or rather what she wasn’t seeing. The driveway was empty, her beloved Peugeot hatchback gone.

  CHAPTER 28

  “Thank God you’re okay.” Without thinking, Fergus enveloped Desley in a bear hug, crushing her to his chest.

  She squirmed. He felt the vibration of her voice against his shirt and relaxed his hold. “I missed that.”

  With a gasp, she pulled back, her hand at her throat. “I couldn’t breathe.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to suffocate you. I’m just so relieved to see you’re not at death’s door.”

  She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “The car accident, the phone call…”

  If her eyebrows arched any higher, they would meet her hairline.

  “I got a phone call from someone using your mobile, a woman who said she had witnessed the accident and stayed with you until the ambulance arrived. She found the phone near the wreckage and pressed redial. She told me the Peugeot – she even read out the license plate number – was a write off and that you were in a bad way. Touch and go. The phone cut out before she could tell me what hospital you had been taken to. I rang every hospital I could find with an emergency department.” Desley’s mouth gaped. He grabbed her hands. “But obviously it wasn’t as serious as she thought. What happened? Anything I can do?”

  “Yes, tell me what planet I’ve landed on.” She leaned sideways, peering past him. “Here come the aliens now.”

  He turned to see two male uniformed officers he didn’t recognize striding across the street toward them. He gave Desley a questioning glance, but her attention was elsewhere.

  “Senior Constable Ewen Adair,” the tall, gaunt-faced officer said, extending a hand first to Desley, then to Fergus. “And, this is my colleague, Constable Luc Nguyen. I understand you reported a burglary and the theft of a motor vehicle.”

  Fergus’s back stiffened. What burglary? What car theft?

  “Not burglary exactly,” Desley was saying. “As far as I can tell, nothing’s missing.” She threw her hands up, her face hardening. “Except of course, for my bloody car. Can you believe that?”

  Senior Constable Adair gestured at the open front door. “We need to take a statement, inside preferably. Somebody should be here shortly to dust for fingerprints, so until then please try to avoid touching any hard surfaces, especially doors and the like.”

  His mind still abuzz, Fergus entered the house last. Someone had broken into Desley’s home, but hadn’t taken anything. What had they been looking for? Had Desley come home unexpectedly or had they been waiting for her? Why steal her car? And the phone call telling him Desley had been seriously injured, what had that been about?

  He knew from experience that unless the offender already had a criminal record or a sharp-eyed neighbor saw something, dusting for prints and Desley’s statement were simply formalities. Just one more to add to the almost ninety per cent of unsolved burglaries. Not that he intended telling her that.

  “Excuse me, sir. Would you mind not touching anything.”

  Without turning around, Fergus held his hands high in the air and kept walking. He heard Desley tell the two uniforms that he used to be a police detective. They ignored him from then on, to the point he felt he didn’t exist.

  Using it to his advantage, he lurked in the background, listening without interfering.

  “From the time you entered the house to when you went back out and found your car gone was how long?”

  Desley’s chest heaved. “I’m not sure. Twenty, thirty minutes tops.” Her eyes widened, her hands clapping the top of her head. “Oh shit, my bag was still in the car.” She bounced to her feet. “My life is in that bag: my phone, my driver’s license, all my credit cards, everything.”

  She whirled on Fergus. “Didn’t you say something about a woman phoning you from my mobile?”

  He didn’t think it had sunk in at the time. “It certainly came up on caller ID as your number. When the woman told me you had been involved in a major car accident, I took her at her word. I didn’t for one second think she might not be telling the truth.”

  “Why would someone do that? You don’t think this has something to do with that email, do you?”

  Fergus didn’t respond to the two officers’ bemused expressions. “This has gone far enough. Let me call Grant,” he said, already dialing. “And if I can’t get him, I’ll try Kim.”

  Standing up, the Senior Constable towered over Fergus. “Mr Coleman, please, we have a job to do. There’ll be time to call friends later.”

  “Detective Inspector Buchanan,” he said loudly, when Grant answered, only addressing him by rank for the benefit of the uniforms, “Fergus Coleman here.”

  “Yes, Fergus.”

  He quickly filled Grant in about the break-in, the theft of Desley’s car and the malicious phone call. “Your call, but I think you’ll agree this isn’t a crime of opportunity.”

  “Let me be the one to decide that. Give me an hour.” Click.

  Grant arrived at the same time as the forensics technician, a young, button-nosed woman weighed down by the hard-sided kit case she was lugging. “No sign of forced entry here. Anywhere else,” he asked, hands behind his back as he leaned in to check the doorframe.

  “No. She came home to find this door open.”

  “So, she could’ve forgotten to shut it.”

  “Well, she didn’t!” interjected Desley from the hallway.

  “If that’s so, then that leaves the scenario that your burglar had a key. Think for a minute about anyone who either has a key or who had access to your keys. I just need a quick word with the officers.” He motioned Senior Constable Adair away from the house, his uncommunicative sidekick tagging along behind.

  Desley joined Fergus outside. “Was he serious? Does he really think it’s someone close to me?”

  “Not necessarily someone you know intimately, but yes, it’s looking more than likely that the offender used a key to gain access.”

  She stared through him, her eyes blank, her teeth gnawing her bottom lip. Behind her, the forensics technician dusted black fingerprint powder over the door handle and surrounds.

  Grant returned, wiping his hands together. “Right then, about those keys. Let’s start with how many front door keys exist.”

  “Four.”

  “And you can account for each of them?”

  She opened her palm. “The spare, one. Two was with my car keys, which are God knows where. Trent, three. Laura, four.”

  “Why does your ex-husband still have a key?” Grant asked, voicing Fergus’s thoughts.

  “I did ask him for it back, but he told me he’d lost it. I know him and even if by some chance he had let himself into the house, he wouldn’t have stolen my car. Anyway, it was a woman who phoned Fergus, not a man.”

  “Maybe they were in it together.”

  “Who?”

  “Your ex’s fiancée perhaps?”

  “Selena?”

  Grant shrugged. “You tell me. But that aside for a moment, tell me why Laura Noble had a key and where she kept it.”

  “You’re not suggesting… Now you are being ridiculous!”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. Please just answer the question.”

  “We each had a key to the other’s place. You know, for in case we locked ourselves out or for some other reason one of us needed to get into the house. Where are you going with this?”

  Grant wrote something in his notebook. “You still have the key Laura gave you?”

  “Yes, I mean no. It was on my key ring along with all my other keys.” Desley spread her arms. “It’s not much good to anyone now, though. The house is no more, let alone the front door.”

  Fergus tried hard not to smile. Grant shot him a warning look.

  “Excuse me for interrupting, sir,” the forensics technician said, appearing at Grant’s side, “but I’ve finished printing the point of entry. Before
I start inside, are there any specific areas you would prefer I concentrate on?”

  “You want me to tell you how to do your job?”

  “No, sir.”

  Three bags full, sir, Fergus thought.

  Her tone controlled, but the set of her face defiant, she continued. “I only asked as a courtesy to you.” She paused. “Sir.”

  “Noted.” He turned back to Desley. “Who else besides Trent James and Laura Noble could have had access to your keys, even for a short time?”

  “The only person I can think of is Brandon, my brother. I usually give him the spare when he’s here so he can come and go as he pleases.”

  “No one else? Think carefully. It could be a tradesman or some other person you’ve invited into your home.”

  Desley started to shake her head, but then stopped. “Selena was here Friday night, but I can’t see how she could’ve got hold of my keys. The only other people I’ve had in the house recently are—”

  “Me,” Fergus cut in, before Desley could mention Kim. “I was here Friday night.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed, his gaze flicking to Fergus and back to Desley. “You mentioned people, plural.”

  “Trent. Trent came to the door after Selena had been here. I talked to him, but I didn’t invite him in.”

  Fergus released his breath in a long, silent sigh. He had compromised Kim enough. If Grant ever found out or even suspected his officer had been passing on inside information, it would be the end of her career. The less he knew about the relationship, the better.

  “If you think of anyone else, let me know,” Grant said to Desley. “In the meantime Senior Constable Adair and Constable Nguyen will be talking to your neighbors. Broad daylight. Someone must have seen something whether they thought it was suspicious at the time or not.” His coat pocket buzzed. “Give me five,” he said, moving out of earshot to answer his phone.