Ellie felt very tired. ‘You know something, Angelica? I have been trying to make excuses for you. No more. You’ve got to pay for what you’ve done.’
Angelica almost spat. ‘The police will believe me! When they look at Susan, and they look at me, who do you think they’ll believe?’
Ellie lost it. ‘Get down those stairs before I box your ears, Miss Angelica!’
Angelica wept. ‘Threats and an assault! You’ll pay for this!’ She stormed off down the stairs.
Susan was also struggling with tears. ‘Oh! Oh! I can’t believe this is happening. I was speaking the truth, Mrs Quicke.’
‘Yes, of course you were. I can’t think that Angelica had the strength or the nerve to kill Kate, but I suspect she knows who did. She insists there was a fight at the party and that it was because of the fight that the drug dealer gave her his stash and money. What if the fight was really over Kate instead and she got killed, perhaps by accident? In that case, would a drug dealer who’d been involved in the fight be so frightened of being found with the proceeds of his crime that he would pass the evidence on to Angelica before he fled? Or, wait a minute, didn’t Angelica say he was taken off to hospital? Or did I dream that?’ Ellie rubbed her forehead. ‘I’m getting so confused.’
‘When was the fight, anyway? It must have been before Angelica left the scene.’
‘When lots of other people would have seen it. We need to talk to more of the partygoers. It hadn’t happened when Jake was there or he’d have said something about it. Or Timmy Lee. And immediately after Jake left, so did Timmy and Angelica. So, if the fight hadn’t happened before that time, how could Angelica have the money and the drugs when she left? She says it all happened in a whirl, that the drugs were given to her just before she left, but that doesn’t make sense, does it? And what happened to the drug dealer? Who was the fight with?’
Susan shook her head. ‘None of it makes sense to me.’
Ellie thought about it. ‘We’re missing something. I wonder, I may be wrong, but suppose the fight happened much later on when only a few people were around, long after Angelica and Timmy Lee had left? And somehow, during that fight, Kate ended up dead. The drug dealer panicked. To delay identification, he took Kate’s purse and jewellery. And then what? How did they get to Angelica?
‘I suppose he might have phoned Angelica and asked her to help him. He was leaving in a hurry, didn’t want the evidence found on him. He knew she was short of money, so he asked her to hide the stuff for him. He must have phoned her to meet him to hand the stuff over.’
‘Or he might just have come to the front door here and handed the stuff over. Then he went on his way. Angelica took the money for her own use and hid the rest of the stuff where she thought she could shove the blame on you and Thomas.’
‘That makes sense. But what a mess!’
Someone played a rhythm on the doorbell down below. Ellie started for the stairs. ‘Bring those bags, Susan. I’ll put them in the safe. That’s Rafael at the door, if I’m not mistaken. Let’s hope he’s got one of the party girls with him. I’m dying to find out what really happened on Saturday night.’
Ellie puffed a bit as she reached the hall and opened the door. It was Rafael, ushering a tall, brown-skinned beauty into the hall. The girl was possibly part Indian, part British, with long, wavy black hair and the minimum of clothing. Ellie blinked. The amount of body beautiful on view was quite something. There was a well-filled bikini-style top and tiny white shorts. Really tiny. Diamond studs flashed in the girl’s ears and nose and tummy button. Glass bangles tinkled on her arm. She stood as tall as Rafael because she was wearing five-inch heels. Wow!
‘This is Gina,’ said Rafael with the air of a cat presenting a mouse to its carer. ‘She went to the party and would love to tell you all about it. Her mate Jess wasn’t in the pub tonight and Gina’s worried about her.’
Angelica shouted from the landing. ‘Whatever she says, she’s a liar. I was leaving the party when she arrived, so there!’
Gina ignored Angelica to hold out a hand with long, false nails on it to Ellie. ‘I’m so pleased to meet you. Raff says you might be able to find out what’s happened to my mate, Jess. It’s not like her, not answering her phone.’ There was a nasal twang to her voice which told Ellie she was born and brought up in West London and had attended local comprehensives. She looked around her. ‘Raff was right. You got a lovely house.’
Gina was no teenager but probably in her late twenties. Model looks and a sharp mind. Nobody’s fool.
‘Er, yes,’ said Ellie, sending Rafael a what now? look. ‘Susan, will you take our guests into the kitchen and make some coffee or tea while I put the evidence in the safe?’
‘Susan did it!’ yelled Angelica from above. ‘I’m going to ring the cops and tell them so.’ She retreated down the corridor and slammed her bedroom door.
But you don’t have a mobile phone now, do you, ducky? You handed yours over to Rafael. More flimflam. Ignore her threats!
Ellie took the two precious bags of evidence to Thomas’s study and had a few moments of panic when she couldn’t remember the combination. Eventually she got it right. She knew she wasn’t supposed to write these things down but couldn’t possibly keep all the numbers she was given in her head, what with mobile phone numbers, and credit card numbers, and national insurance numbers, and … well, she gave up after that. Thomas was better at numbers than she was, but even he had a secret list of numbers disguised as something else.
Susan had the kettle on and was making proper coffee when Ellie joined the others in the kitchen. Ellie wondered if it were a good idea for her to drink good coffee at that time of the evening but decided that she needed the stimulation. Her brain was feeling tired and coffee might get her through the next few hours.
And here came Angelica, sidling in to take a seat at the table. ‘It’s boring upstairs. I might as well hear what lies Gina is going to tell.’
Gina sat sideways on her chair, disposing her long legs in seemingly careless fashion while actually calling attention to their shapeliness. Ellie noticed that although Rafael appreciated the view, he wasn’t going overboard about it.
Ellie also noticed that Susan looked down her nose at Gina’s tactics, but that they didn’t irritate her like they were irritating Angelica.
Gina’s flashing dark eyes and long, wavy hair – not to mention her long, shapely limbs and her air of amused well-being – made Angelica look pallid.
Yes, Gina liked to be admired. She knew she was annoying Angelica and she didn’t care.
Angelica’s lips thinned. ‘Gina’s well known as a gossip, aren’t you, G? I mean, no one ever takes anything you say seriously.’
Gina smiled, showing very white teeth. ‘Listen to the little bird. Cheep, cheep, cheep. Angelica, my dear, the cracks in your make-up are showing.’
‘What?’ Angelica’s hands flew to her face, as if to reassure herself it was still there.
Rafael’s smile widened. ‘Concentrate, girls. Gina, how did you find out about the party?’
‘Hold on a mo. You said you’d help me look for Jess.’
‘And so I will. First things first. Tell us about the party.’
‘Well, we met in the pub, the usual. Talked about what we’d like to do that weekend. Jess saw the party advertised on Facebook.’
Ellie said, ‘Do you know who put it on Facebook?’
Gina pointed at Angelica, who huffed and puffed. ‘Nonsense! Would I do that?’
‘Yeah. ’Course you would,’ said Gina, standing no nonsense. ‘It’s a shame Jess isn’t here. She saw it.’
Rafael said, ‘I expect she’s working. You said she helps out at the Indian restaurant some nights.’
‘Not on Mondays. They close on Mondays. That’s why—’
‘Well, tell us how it was that you got to the party, Gina. Start from the beginning.’
‘Jess said she’d seen there was a party on at Angelica’s. We was sitting with Tim
my and Wilf. Wilf was grousing. He’d just had a row with his partner, so he was weeping into his beer and we was trying to cheer him up, like. Big Scotty came over to join us. He’s one of the photography nuts. He’s always after Jess and me to pose for him. Not porn. For calendars, like. He said it would be good to go to someplace new, try out some poses in a different background. For our portfolios, right?’
Angelica snapped, ‘Porn! I tell you, you can’t trust a word she says.’
Gina was amused. She smiled. ‘You mean Big Scotty never asked you to sit for him?’ And to Ellie, ‘He’s very artistic, like. Dead set on getting the mood right, and the backgrounds. Does he go on about using the right background! We know, Jess and I, that you can put any background you want on any photo, right? But we was at a loose end, so we said “Why not?” But a ’course, Big Scotty does have creeping hands, so we said Wilf must come, too. Wilf has a car, see, so it would cheer him up and it was like it was meant that he could get us there and back safely. Nice old house, it was. I’d prefer something a bit more modern but beggars can’t and so on. Pity it got trashed.’ A shrug of delightfully bare shoulders. ‘Since it was Angelica’s, like, we didn’t care, did we?’
‘You thought it was Angelica’s flat?’
‘Sure. She’d been boasting about how her parents had set her up in it when they had a spot of cash to spare. More fool them is what I think.’
‘How did it get trashed?’
ELEVEN
Monday evening
‘How did it get trashed?’ Gina shrugged. ‘Dunno, really. It was a party, got out of hand. We didn’t see much of that, just the start, like, ’cos we was in the big bedroom at the front. Beee-you-ti-ful bed. Big Scotty was in seventh heaven. And the lighting wasn’t bad, either. So we tanked up with a bottle of wine we’d brought and had ourselves a ball. Mind you, Big Scotty’s hands were everywhere, the scumbag; I shoulda told him to put the brake on then and there, and no mistake. I mean, he isn’t called “Big” for nothing, if you get my drift …?’
Most of them got the drift before Ellie, but she did catch up.
Gina went on, ‘Wilf kept wandering in and out, stupid git! One time he brung in some vodka which was lying around in the other room – little bottles, like. He said as someone as works for an airline brung them. That vodka packs a punch, doesn’t it just! Then he come in saying he’d been offered some pills to cheer him up. We screeched at him not to be so stupid and he said, “All right!” and that he’d stick to the vodka.’
Angelica tossed her curls. ‘You are nothing but a slut, having it off in my cousin’s bed!’
Gina merely smiled. ‘Haven’t you been getting enough lately, darling?’
Angelica snarled, which was, thought Ellie, rather like a toy kitten snarling at a lion.
Angelica said, ‘If you tell lies about me to the police, I’ll tell them you were taking drugs at the party. I personally have never seen the need for drugs, being able to get my kicks in the normal way, but I hear that—’
Ellie interrupted what was likely to descend into an argument about drugs. ‘Gina, did you actually see someone selling drugs at the party?’
‘Good old Clay, yes. He used to be a friend of ours, well, of Jess’s really, but then he got nicked for possession and dropped out of uni and now he hangs around, peddling the stuff. Working for some Mr Big or other. There’s no great harm in him. I mean, he comes up and offers whatever he’s got at the moment, we tell him to go away and that’s about it. He’s using, himself. I don’t reckon he’ll make thirty, the way he’s going. Pathetic, really.’
‘What about the fight?’
‘What fight? I didn’t see no fight.’
Ellie repeated, ‘No fight? But …’ And looked at Angelica, who was examining her nails and didn’t meet her eye.
Gina went on, ‘What it was, we was turned out of the bedroom, others wanting their turn, like, and that would be way after midnight, maybe? Nearer one? So we shifted ourselves. It was pretty crowded in the big room at the back, and noisy! Tellies and radios all blaring away, you could hardly hear yourself think. The lights had gone and someone had crashed some glasses on to the floor, so it would have been a bit dicey to join the dancers. I didn’t fancy getting my feet cut, wearing my strappy sandals as I was.’
‘Did you recognize anyone else who was there?’
A shrug. ‘Seen some faces before, maybe, in the pub or in the caff, but not to know their names, like. Plus there was a crowd of low-lifes – no one we knew – swigging back the beer and whatever else they could get hold of, shouting insults, pushing one another around … not our scene. No respect! So we left them to it and went looking for Wilf, who was throwing up in the second bedroom. Stupid git! He never could handle vodka. Jess said we ought to clear it up, but as it was Angelica’s place, like, we didn’t bother. We took Wilf out into the garden to sober up and thought about calling it a day. Clay was hanging around, wanting us to buy something, and we kept telling him to shove off, pardon my language.’
‘What was he selling exactly, do you know?’
‘Not interested. He said he had something to put the sparkle back in our lives but you can’t believe a word he says, and we had a problem, like. Wilf had drunk too much and couldn’t drive us home, see? Big Scotty lost his licence some time back, and though I have had some driving lessons you can’t keep a car in London; too expensive and not needed for work, which I can walk to. Jess is the same. We talked about if I could drive Wilf’s car but it’s not an automatic, like, and I said it wouldn’t be safe. Big Scotty said he’d risk it, and we said we wouldn’t, not on yours. I said we should take a cab back, but Big Scotty lives in Acton, we live in North Ealing and we hadn’t enough money on us to get everyone home to our own places.’
‘Did you see Angelica’s friend Jake at the party?’
‘Raff asked me that. Yes, we did. Just for a sec, when we were on our way out to the garden. He was nose-to-nose with Angel here. I couldn’t hear what they said, but they wasn’t happy bunnies.’
Ellie said, ‘You’re sure it was Jake? Did you see him leave? What about the fight?’
‘Fight? You keep going on about a fight but I didn’t see no fight.’
‘You said a crowd of low-lifes were pushing one another around.’
‘Yeah, but it weren’t no fight. Push, push. Fall down. Swear. Get up and find another drink. You couldn’t call that a fight. Unless you think what Big Scotty did to Clay was a fight, but nah! Too one-sided, like.’
‘Tell us about Big Scotty and Clay.’
‘Well, we was in the garden with Wilf and Big Scotty. Now, Big Scotty, he’s really moral, like, his parents used to go to church and all. He got really uptight about Clay keeping on at us, wanting us to buy. In the end, Big Scotty picked him up – oh, Lord, how we laughed! – and he dumped Clay in the pond, and there he stuck with his chin on his knees and his feet dancing in the air, screeching fit to bust. Honest, we was killing ourselves.’
Ellie enjoyed the picture Gina had painted for them. Rafael laughed out loud. Susan smiled.
Ellie said, ‘That was all that happened?’
‘We-ll, Jess, she’s that stupid she used to go around with Clay when he first come up to uni, so she’s still got a soft spot for him and thinks he’ll straighten out as he gets older, which I don’t think, personally, is going to happen, but that’s what she thinks. Anyway, she got all sorry for him and made Big Scotty help him out of the pond. It’s only a titchy little pond, nothing in it much except some scummy water and leaves. No fish or anything. So he was stood standing there, with that wet patch which looked like he’d, you know …?’ She put her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter and everyone else smiled, too.
Ellie said, ‘And that was the so-called fight?’
‘Well, that’s the only fight we saw.’
‘Angelica says that Clay gave her something to keep for him.’ Ellie looked around. ‘Where’s she gone?’ For Angelica had disappeared.
&nbs
p; Gina shook her head. ‘No, no. Angelica had left the party long before that.’
‘How do you know? You didn’t see her go, did you?’
‘Kate said so. She came screeching out of the house into the garden, looking for Jake while we was pulling Clay out of the pond. Kate was yelling that she was going to kill Jake for standing her up. She said someone told her that he’d gone off with Angelica—’
Ellie said, ‘Angelica told us she’d gone off with Timmy Lee on his bike and he confirmed it. I didn’t dream that, did I?’
If Angelica had gone off with Timmy Lee when Gina and Co. were out in the garden talking to Kate, then how had Angelica managed to get possession of the drugs and the money? Not to mention Kate’s purse? This really is the key question.
Rafael was frowning. ‘Gina, you must be mistaken. Angelica couldn’t have left then.’
Gina shrugged. ‘That’s what Kate said. And we didn’t see Angelica on our way out. Kate was in a right state. Hysterical, you know? A bit embarrassing, really. And nothing to do with us. We’d got enough on our hands with Wilf, who was away with the fairies. Jess thought he might have taken one of Clay’s pills, though he swore he hadn’t. So we had a confab there and then, in the garden, and Big Scotty and I decided we’d better get Wilf home. We rang Wilf’s partner to see if he was still up and was able to look after Wilf in spite of the row they’d been having. And he said that if we took Wilf home he’d look after him, but that he wasn’t turning out to act as a minicab at that time of night. So we asked Jess if she was coming but she was fussing over Clay, wanting to know if he’d like to take his trousers off to dry and she’d find him some others, but he wasn’t making much sense by that time. Silly girl; she oughta have left him to it. But no, she said she’d stay with him a while. So we left.’
‘Kate was all right when you left?’
‘Kate? Oh, her. Dunno about “all right”. Half left and then some, if you ask me. Talking a blue streak, like. High as a kite. Hysterical. She wanted an audience, it didn’t matter who. We couldn’t get away fast enough. She was in our faces, wanting us to stay and listen to her troubles. Big Scotty and I had had enough. We wasn’t worried about Madam Kate with her soft job and designer clothes. No, we was worried about Jess, but we couldn’t get her to come along of us. Big Scotty, he’s a bit of a softie, didn’t want to leave her there, but me, I said it was all right because Jess hadn’t drunk as much as us and knows how to take care of herself, like, only now I’m thinking we made a mistake and we oughta have got her to come away with us.’
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