by Kim Fleet
‘I didn’t say what time I went to his room.’
Jocasta’s neck blossomed red. ‘What time were you there, then?’
‘About eight. Who was out with you?’
‘The film and sound guys, me and Xanthe.’
‘Anyone come back early? Or leave the group at any point?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘And Xanthe, how did she get on with Lewis?’
‘She wasn’t one of his conquests, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ She barked a humourless laugh. ‘He’d need a totally different arrangement to interest her.’
It took a moment for Eden to work out what she was saying. ‘Xanthe’s gay?’
‘Didn’t you realise?’
Some private eye I am, Eden thought, mentally kicking herself. ‘Could it have been Xanthe I heard last night?’
‘I said she was out with us,’ Jocasta snapped.
Eden changed tack. ‘Do you still have Lewis’s laptop?’
‘Yes, he gave it to me when we finished filming. Said he was off to see some woman.’
Eden decided to give the girl a break. ‘It was his mother he went to see,’ she said, gently.
‘Oh.’ The relief on Jocasta’s face was heartbreaking: despite everything she knew about Lewis, she still yearned for him. Eden pressed home her advantage. ‘Can I borrow the laptop, please?’
‘Why?’
‘It might have information on it that will help us find who killed him.’
‘Sure.’ Jocasta nodded. ‘It’s in my room. I’ll fetch it. Just a mo.’
She hurried away, ponytail swinging like a metronome, and returned shortly with a laptop bag which she handed to Eden.
‘You won’t be able to get into it, though,’ Jocasta said.
‘Password protected?’ The work of minutes to crack it.
Jocasta laughed, genuinely this time. ‘Lewis couldn’t ever remember passwords. He used his fingerprint. Only he can get into it.’
18:54 hours
First stop her friend Judy’s house, a three-storey Victorian terraced house close to the railway station. Eden searched for a parking space and found one at the top of the road. Tucking her jacket round her, she walked back down the street to a neat house painted pale blue with cream window sashes and sills. The door was a deep midnight blue with a knocker in the shape of a dolphin, a clipped bay tree in a blue pot beside it. The overall impression of grown-up elegance was undercut somewhat by the wheelie bins clogging the tiny front yard, and the plastic dinosaurs wedged in the pot’s soil.
Eden rang the bell, and not hearing a chime within, banged on the knocker. Judy answered, filling the doorway with her Amazonian physique.
‘Can’t get enough of me, eh?’ she said, hugging Eden to her in a rib-crushing embrace.
They had met up at their usual Tuesday night Zumba class the evening before and gone to the pub for a drink afterwards, as they always did. ‘To put the calories back on,’ as Judy always exclaimed.
‘I’m here in a partly official capacity,’ Eden said.
‘Ooh, goody, are you going to arrest me?’ Judy said. She leaned forwards, and in a stage-whisper hissed in Eden’s ear, ‘I could do with the rest, to be honest. Make sure you bang me up for a good long time. Until the boys are at university would be fine.’ She jutted her wrists forwards for the cuffs.
‘That onesie should get you ten years at least,’ Eden said, eyeing the black and white velour all-in-one panda leisure suit.
‘Horrible, isn’t it? My mother-in-law bought it. I’m sweating like a pig in here.’
‘Thanks for the update.’ Eden went into the hall, took off her jacket and hunted for space on the pegs to hang it. They groaned with coats and hats and scarves, so she slung her jacket over the newel post and followed Judy into the kitchen, poking her head into the sitting room to say hi to Marcus, Judy’s husband, and her three young boys.
‘Are you staying for dinner?’ Judy asked.
‘I didn’t mean to invite myself,’ Eden started.
‘It’s chicken bites, potato waffles and beans,’ Judy said. ‘Can’t be bothered with grown-up food tonight. I think I’m coming down with something. I probably need a long time in bed being nursed by someone big and hunky with bulging muscles and a large …’
‘I get the idea,’ Eden said. ‘Have you tried a cold shower?’
‘Spoil sport,’ Judy said, jiggling the kettle to assess how much water was in it and flicking the switch. ‘Now, what do you want?’
‘Firstly, a balloon,’ Eden said, shifting a pile of books from a kitchen chair and sitting down.
‘Is this some kinky thing I don’t know about?’ Judy said, hauling open a kitchen drawer and dragging out handfuls of rubber bands, pens, coupons and assorted junk. ‘Long and thin or a fat one?’
‘Fat one, please.’
‘Red, blue or yellow?’
‘Any.’
‘Here, have a red one.’ Judy slung over the balloon. ‘What do you need it for anyway?’
Eden hefted Lewis’s laptop onto the table. ‘To get into this. It’s got biometric security on it.’
‘You’re shitting me!’ Judy breathed. She leaned over to see. ‘You can do this?’
‘Never tried, but I know the theory.’ Eden opened the laptop, careful to keep her hands away from the screen. She angled it to the light until she could see the smudges clearly. ‘Here goes nothing,’ she said, inflating the balloon slightly and rolling it over the screen. She pressed the power switch, and when the laptop bloomed into life, she pressed the balloon’s surface over the fingerprint reader. ‘Fingers crossed.’
She rolled the balloon over the reader again, and the laptop screen changed colour and displayed the start-up menu.
‘I’m in,’ Eden said, letting go of the breath she’d been holding.
‘You alright, Eden?’ Judy asked. ‘You look terrible.’
Eden scrubbed her hands over her face. ‘It’s been quite a day.’
Judy muscled into the seat next to her. ‘Budge up, what we looking for?’
‘Anything that will lead us to a murder.’
Judy gawked at her.
‘My client was murdered last night,’ Eden said. ‘I found him, and I’m going to find who did it.’
She filled Judy in on the day’s adventures while the laptop’s hard drive whirred and clicked. When the desktop was presented to her, she selected documents and reviewed the folders. There was a lot of dross on the laptop: research notes for old TV documentaries; lists of contacts for each programme; and contracts for the sound and technical guys. There were also half-baked plans for future documentaries, including one called, ‘Zombies in Cardiff: Fact or Fiction’, and some outline costs for making it.
One folder was named ‘Accounts’. She clicked it open and found separate sub-folders for each documentary, helpfully named by the same title as the programme. She flicked through all the spreadsheets, not really knowing what she was looking for but just hoping that some anomaly would shoot out of the page at her. Nothing.
The sub-folder called ‘Tax’ was more interesting. In it were PDF copies of Lewis’s bank accounts: current, savings and credit cards. The credit cards were maxed out: like mother, like son, she thought, recalling the unpaid bills and astronomical pay-day loan statements stashed in Tracey’s biscuit tin. Lewis paid the minimum on each card every month, and when he needed more money, he simply applied for a new credit card with a higher balance and transferred the lot across.
‘Blimey!’ Judy exclaimed, peering at the bank statements. ‘I worry when I’ve got more than a hundred on my credit card.’
The savings account had under thirty quid in it, but the current account had more going on. A regular going-in and coming-out of salary, utility bills and mortgage payments. Then two weeks previously, Lewis had deposited thirty thousand pounds in cash. Immediately after, there was a bank transfer of thirty thousand pounds to T. Jones.
‘That’s weird,
’ Eden said, pointing to the transaction. ‘Where would you get thirty grand in cash?’
‘Are you sure it was cash?’ Judy asked.
‘Counter transaction – says cash on the statement.’
‘Drug deal?’
Eden screwed up her face.
‘Sold his car and was paid in cash?’
‘Who pays for anything in cash these days? It’s easier to pay by PayPal or bank transfer.’
‘Obviously dodgy then?’
Eden thought of her old life, hunting down scumbags: drug dealers, gun runners, fixers, human traffickers, slavers and sex traders. ‘It looks like money laundering,’ she said. ‘You put it in the bank, declare it on your tax return, and that money is clean.’ She had a thought. ‘Or bail money. You pay that in cash and get it back in cash and that makes it clean.’
‘Did he use cash to pay the people he was filming? You know, bribing MPs to ask questions in parliament,’ Judy asked.
That was a point. Eden dug her notebook out of her bag and made a note to ask Xanthe and Jocasta how they paid informants. But the fact remained that the money went into his account in cash, and was transferred straight out to T. Jones, his mother. So if the money was for paying informants, it didn’t reach them. Had he embezzled it?
Eden thought for a moment. ‘You’ve got a friend who works for the BBC, haven’t you?’
‘Natasha. You met her at my party last Christmas.’
‘Would you mind ringing her up and asking her some delicate questions?’
‘Proper PI stuff?’ Judy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Do I get to wear a mac and trilby and smoke on street corners?’
‘If you want to. Though you might want to change out of your fancy dress costume first.’ Eden twitched an eyebrow at Judy’s disgraceful onesie.
Judy grabbed the phone from its holster. ‘Right, Columbo, what do you want to know?’
‘Roughly how much a TV producer gets paid. Specifically, are they likely to have a spare thirty grand lying around in cash.’
‘If they do, I’m jumping ship and getting myself a TV producer,’ Judy said, pressing the number. She cocked her head to listen as it rang. ‘Natasha, it’s Judy. Fine, thanks. And you? Got a quick question, it’s going to sound odd but it’s for my PI friend, you know? Yes, that one. Question number one: how much does a TV producer earn? Ri–ight. So are they likely to have a spare thirty grand lying around? Possibly in cash?’ Judy held the phone away from her ear so Eden could hear the sarcastic laughter.
While Judy chatted with Natasha, Eden browsed the remaining folders on the laptop. Nothing sprang out. Just as she was about to close it down, she checked the recycling bin. Drafts of contracts. Research notes. Documents that had gone through numerous versions and were patriotic with red and blue track changes and comments. And then an untitled document that made her heart miss a beat:
Keep looking over your shoulder, sick boy
There were several other untitled documents that had been AutoSaved. Eden opened them one by one:
You think you’re so clever but I know what you really are. Prepare for the end
You can’t escape. I know where and what you are
One word from me and your life is over
Ready to die, sick boy?
You don’t deserve to live
I’ll tell the world what you are
You should be ashamed of yourself. You don’t deserve to live
‘Bloody hell!’ Eden cried. The poison pen letters Lewis had received. She flicked through the pages of her notebook. According to Lewis, the first note he received was ‘You don’t deserve to live’, which he got on 17 September. According to the file details, it was created two days earlier, on the 15th. The second letter, ‘I’ll tell the world what you are’, was received on the 24th of September, and created on the 23rd. All the other letters were created on 1 October.
Judy was back in the seat beside her and goggling at the letters. ‘Have you ever thought of having a normal job?’ she asked.
‘No one would employ me,’ Eden said. ‘What do you make of these?’
‘Most of them written on the same day, and I guess they were printed out at the same time because none of them have file names but have been AutoSaved.’ Judy reached over. ‘Check the document properties.’
She did a right mouse click on the first document and pulled up the properties: the number of words, the number of lines, the date and time it was AutoSaved, and the name of the person who created it.
Jocasta Simpson.
21:10 hours
Eden was settled on the settee, listening to a radio play, when her doorbell rang. Instantly she froze, yesterday’s phone call from Hammond chiming in her memory. Had he sent someone to frighten her? Abduct her? Her scars, a daily visible reminder of Hammond’s reaction to people who crossed him, prickled.
She peeped through the spyhole and her stomach lurched. Aidan. Tall, handsome, clever. He was raking his hand through his dark hair and glancing up and down the corridor. She considered not opening the door, but relented and let him in.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello.’ He shuffled about uneasily.
‘Want a drink or anything?’
‘No, thanks, I …’ He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. It was a long, black woollen overcoat, and she knew that he often carried volumes of poetry or philosophy about with him, in case he had to wait in a queue or was stranded without something to read. ‘The gang suggested I should come and see you.’
‘The gang?’
‘Trev and Mandy.’
‘What about?’
‘Look, can I sit down a minute?’
‘Sure.’ She stepped aside and he perched on her settee, still with his hands in his coat pockets.
‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said.
‘We?’
‘The Cultural Heritage Unit. You remember when we excavated the skeleton we found a bottle that looks like the Holy Blood of Hailes?’
‘The thing that caused all the fuss and brought Lewis Jordan here and now he’s dead? Yes, I vaguely remember that.’
He flinched at her tone. She stared right back at him.
‘The thing is, last night, when everyone packed up, they found it was missing. They rang me straight away but …’
‘Hang on.’ Eden held up her hand. ‘What do you mean “when everyone packed up”? Weren’t you there?’
‘Er, no, I’d left.’ His eyes skittered away from her face and she was instantly on alert. ‘Trev rang me and said the Blood had gone. It’s been stolen.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Trev called about half six. Maybe a bit after.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Went back to the Unit to help search for it.’ Aidan stood and paced around the room. ‘Look, Eden, I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the right bit here. Someone has stolen the Holy Blood and you’re questioning me like you want to know where I was all evening.’
That did it. She exploded. ‘That’s because I found an object in a murdered man’s room that could only have come from you,’ she shouted. ‘And now you tell me that the Holy Blood was stolen. The only person who’s likely to have stolen it is Lewis. And he was killed only hours after you discovered it was missing.’ She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Have you told the police?’
‘About the Blood? No. I’m telling you because the gang thought you’d know what to do.’
‘What I should do is make a citizen’s arrest right now, on suspicion of the murder of Lewis Jordan.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You’ve got motive and opportunity, Aidan,’ she said, her face very close to his. ‘And you left your calling card behind.’ She was so angry she could hit him. ‘Still saying you don’t know anything about that paper swan?’
He looked away, the muscles in his jaw working. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I have no idea how it got there.’
Liar.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Hailes Abbey, October 1538
It was warm in the infirmary: there were always good fires there, even when there were no sick to be attended to. Brother John insisted that they be ready at a moment’s notice to receive a poor ailing soul, and kept the fires well stoked. He also ignored the rule of silence which applied to the infirmary as much as to the rest of the Abbey, insisting that he could hardy instruct Matthew in the apothecary’s art through mime show.
Brother Sebastian perched on a stool in the middle of the floor, his robes untied and his arms bared. He was the Abbey cook, a ruddy-faced, vile-tempered man who seasoned the broth with the sweat from his brow. He gritted his teeth as Brother John applied the knife.
‘Ready with the bowl, Matthew?’ Brother John asked, as the knife cut into the flesh on Brother Sebastian’s forearm, and the blood started to flow. Matthew placed the bowl under the Brother’s elbow, and watched the dark blood drop into it.
When a puddle of blood covered the bottom of the bowl, Brother John released the cord fastened around Brother Sebastian’s forearm. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, pressing a wad of linen against the wound. ‘Take this, Matthew, for one moment.’
Matthew kept up the pressure on the wound while Brother John took the bowl of blood away. By the time he returned, the wound had stopped bleeding and was ready for bandaging.
‘Now rest,’ Brother John said, tucking Brother Sebastian up in bed. ‘Sweet Matthew will bring you some herb broth to help you recover your strength.’
As Matthew turned away, Abbot Sagar entered the infirmary. Tall, broad shouldered and imposing, his very shadow made the heart quake.
‘I heard voices,’ the Abbot said, his black eyes switching between the brothers and Matthew.
‘A prayer, Brother Abbot,’ Brother John said, smoothly. Brother Sebastian nodded in the bed and held up a string of rosary beads.
Abbot Sagar snapped his attention back to Brother John. ‘I have told the other brothers, and now I’m telling you, that the abhorrence known as the Holy Blood is to be taken away.’