Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  The same lazy grace in his step, the casual but expensive clothes, chin up, slightly receding hairline. Hardly looking, she dashed into the road, aware of horns blaring around her, and she had almost made it across when his attention was attracted by the noise.

  He paused and looked toward her, a puzzled expression on his face. Annie got to the pavement and stopped, oblivious to the cursing of the last driver who had barely missed her. It wasn’t

  Phil after all, she realized. There was a superficial similarity, but that was all. The man bent to pat his dog, then, with a curious backward glance, he carried on walking toward the traffic lights. Annie leaned against a lamppost until her heartbeat returned to normal and cursed. This wasn’t the first time she’d thought she had seen him; she would have to be more careful in future, less jumpy. If she was to be realistic about it, she had to realize that bumping into him in a street in London was the last thing that was likely to happen.

  She was still wired from the train journey. She would have to calm down. She had made the 3:25 and had even managed to find a seat in the quiet car, but no matter how many windows had been open, it had still been too hot. And she had been thinking about Phil, which was probably why her mind had fooled her into thinking she had actually seen him across the street. Throughout most of the journey, she had read the tabloids, scouring the pages for any whiff of Phil, but had found nothing, as usual. She had to get a grip on herself.

  Despite the rule of quiet, more than one mobile rang during the journey, and Annie could also hear the overspill from someone’s personal headphones. It had made her think of Banks, and again she started wondering where the hell he was and what he had to do with Jennifer Clewes’s murder. According to the woman with the baby, Banks had left under his own steam that morning, but none of this explained what the hell was going on.

  Annie found the house just off Lothian Road. The two DCs assigned to watch the flat were still sitting in the kitchen, the man with his feet on the table, shirtsleeves rolled up, chewing on a matchstick and reading through a pile of letters, and the woman sipping tea as she flipped through a stack of Hello magazines. Two tipped cigarette butts lay crushed in a Royal Doulton saucer. Somehow, both detectives managed to look like naughty schoolkids caught in the act, though neither showed any trace of guilt. Annie introduced herself.

  “And how are things in the frozen north?” asked the man, whose name was Sharpe, keeping his feet firmly on the kitchen table and the matchstick in the corner of his mouth. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in about four days.

  “Hot,” said Annie. “What are you doing?”

  Sharpe gestured to the letters. “Just nosing about a bit. Afraid there’s nothing very interesting, just bills, junk mail and bank statements, all pretty much as you’d expect. No really juicy stuff. People don’t write letters the way they used to, do they? It’s all e-mail and texting these days, ’in’it?”

  Considering that Sharpe looked about twenty-one, it was odd to hear him being so critical of “these days,” as they were probably the only days he knew. But the irony in his tone wasn’t lost on Annie, and the callous disregard which both of them seemed to display toward the victim’s home angered her. “Okay, thanks for keeping an eye out,” she said. “You can leave now.”

  Sharpe looked at his partner, Handy, and raised an eyebrow. The match in the corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re not our guv,” he said.

  Annie sighed. “Fine,” she said. “If that’s the way you want to play it. My patience is already running a bit thin.” She took out her mobile, went into the hallway and phoned DI Brooke at Kennington station. After a few pleasantries and the promise of a drink together later that evening, Annie explained the situation briefly, then went back into the kitchen, smiled at Sharpe and handed him the phone.

  The moment he put it to his ear, his feet shot off the table and he sat bolt upright in his chair, almost swallowing his matchstick. His partner, who hadn’t said a word so far, frowned at him. When the call was over, Sharpe dropped the mobile on the table, scowled at Annie, then turned to his partner and said, “Come on, Jackie, we’ve got to go.” He made a show of swaggering as slowly as possible out of the house, which Annie thought would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic, and with one mean backward glance mouthed the word “Bitch” and stuck his middle finger in the air.

  Annie felt inordinately satisfied when that little scene was over, and she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. It was lukewarm, but she couldn’t be bothered to make a fresh pot. One of the DCs had opened a window, but it was no use; there was no breeze to bring relief. An empty strand of flypaper twisted in what little air current there was over the sink.

  While she was waiting, Annie took out her mobile and rang Gristhorpe in Eastvale. Dr. Glendenning had finished the postmortem on Jennifer Clewes and had found nothing other than the gunshot wound. Her stomach contents consisted of a partially digested ham-and-tomato sandwich, eaten at least two hours before death, which bore out Templeton’s theory that she had driven up from London and probably stopped at a motorway café on the way. Glendenning wouldn’t commit himself to time of death, except to narrow it down to between one and four in the morning. The SOCOs were still working the scene and would get around to examining Banks’s cottage as soon as they could. They had found a partial print on the driver’s door of Jennifer Clewes’s car, but it didn’t match any they had on file.

  As it turned out, Annie didn’t have long to wait for Jennifer’s flatmate. At about seven o’clock, the front door opened and she heard a woman’s voice call out. “Jenn? Hello, Jenn? Are you back yet?”

  When the owner of the voice walked into the kitchen and saw Annie, she stopped dead in her tracks, put her hand to her chest and backed away. “What is it?” she asked. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Annie took out her warrant card and walked over to her. The young woman studied it.

  “North Yorkshire?” she said. “I don’t understand. You broke into our house. How did you do that? I didn’t see any damage to the lock.”

  “We’ve got keys for all occasions,” said Annie.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “Are you Kate Nesbit, Jennifer Clewes’s flatmate?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Maybe you’d better sit down,” said Annie, pulling out a chair at the table.

  Kate was still dazed as she lowered herself into the chair. Her eyes lighted on the saucer and her nostrils twitched. “Who’s been smoking? We don’t allow smoking in the flat.”

  Annie cursed herself for not getting rid of the butts, though their smell still lingered in the warm air.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said, putting the saucer on the draining board. She didn’t know where the waste bin was.

  “You mean someone else has been here?”

  Annie lingered by the sink. “Just two detectives from your local station. I had words with them. I’m sorry they were so rude. It was necessary to get in, believe me.”

  “Necessary?” Kate shook her head. She was a pretty girl, in a very wholesome, no-nonsense sort of way, with her blond hair cut short, black-rimmed oval glasses and a healthy pink glow on her cheeks. She looked athletic, Annie thought, and it was easy to visualize her tall, rangy frame on horseback. Even the clothes she wore, white shorts and a green rugby-style shirt, looked sporty. “What’s going on?” she asked. “It’s not good news, is it?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Annie sat down opposite her. “Drink?”

  “Not for me. Tell me what it is. It’s not Daddy, is it? It can’t be. I was just there.”

  “You were visiting your parents?”

  “In Richmond, yes. I go every Saturday when I’m not working.”

  “No,” said Annie. “It’s not your father. Look, this might be a bit of a shock, but I need you to look at it.” She opened her briefcase and slipped out the photograph of Jennifer Clewes that Peter Darby had taken at the mortuary. It wasn’t a b
ad one—she looked peaceful enough and there were no signs of violence, no blood—but there was no doubt that it was a photograph of a dead person. “Is this Jennifer Clewes, your flatmate?”

  Kate put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said, tears in her eyes. “It’s Jenn. What happened to her? Did she have an accident?”

  “In a way. Look, do you have any idea why she was driving up to Yorkshire late last night?”

  “I didn’t know that she was.”

  “Did you know she’d gone out?”

  “Yes. We were home last night. I mean, we don’t live in one another’s pockets, we have our own rooms, but…My God, I don’t believe this.” She put her hands to her face. Annie could see that her whole body was shaking.

  “What happened, Kate?” Annie said. “Please, try and focus for me.”

  Kate took a deep breath. It seemed to help a little. “There was nothing we wanted to watch on telly, so we were just watching a DVD. Bend It Like Beckham. Jenn’s mobile went off and she swore. We were enjoying the film. Anyway, she went into her bedroom to answer it and when she came back she said there was an emergency and she had to go out, to just carry on watching the film without her. She said she wasn’t sure when she would be back. Now you’re telling me she’ll never come back.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose it’d be about half past ten, a quarter to eleven.”

  That was consistent with the timing, Annie thought. It would take about four hours to drive from Kennington to Eastvale, depending on traffic, and Jennifer Clewes had been killed between one and four o’clock in the morning about three miles shy of her destination. “Did she give you any idea about where she might be going?”

  “None at all. Just that she had to go. Right then. But that’s just like her.”

  “Oh?”

  “What I mean is that she wasn’t very forthcoming about what she was doing, where she was going. Even if I needed to know when she’d be back, for meals and such. She could be very inconsiderate.” Kate put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, listen to me. How terrible.” She started crying.

  “It’s all right,” said Annie, trying to comfort her. “Try to stay calm. Did Jennifer seem worried, frightened?”

  “No, not exactly frightened. But she was pale, as if she’d had a shock or something.”

  “Have you any idea who made the call?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “What did you do after she left?”

  “Watched the rest of the film and went to bed. Look, what’s happened? Did she have a car crash? Was that it? It can’t have been her fault. She was always a careful driver and she never drank over the limit.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” said Annie.

  “Then what? Please tell me.”

  She’d have to find out sooner or later, Annie thought. She got up, took a couple of tumblers from the glass-fronted cupboard and filled them with tap water. She passed one to Kate and sat down again. She could hardly bear Kate’s imploring expression, the wide, fearful eyes and furrowed brow, the tumbler shaking in her hands. When Kate heard what Annie had to tell her, her life would never be the same again; it would be forever tainted, forever marked by murder.

  “Jennifer was shot,” Annie said in a soft, flat voice. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Shot?” Kate echoed. “No…she…But I don’t understand…”

  “Neither do we, Kate. That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?”

  “Harm Jenn? Of course not.” The words came out in gulps, as if Kate were desperate for air.

  Kate put the glass down, but she missed the edge of the table. It fell to the floor and shattered. She stood up and put her hand to her mouth, then, without warning, her eyes turned up, and before Annie could reach her she crumpled in a heap on the kitchen floor.

  Look,” said Corrine, “are you sure we should be doing this? These are Roy’s private business files, after all.”

  “It’s a bit late to get squeamish now,” said Banks. “Besides,” he said, gesturing to the CD, “maybe it’s just more of the same.”

  Corinne gave him a dirty look and turned back to the screen. “Well,” she said, “at least the drive isn’t password-protected.”

  “And given Roy’s concern with privacy,” said Banks, “that probably means there’s nothing really confidential on it.” Or nothing incriminating, he thought.

  “So what’s the point?”

  “Perhaps it’s something he wanted me to find and read. He’d know I’d be no good at cracking passwords and such. Besides, I need anything I can get. Business contacts, activities, habits, anything.”

  “There’s quite a mix of stuff,” said Corinne, scrolling down. “Some Word documents, Money files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, market research reports, memos, letters.”

  “Can you print it out?”

  “Some of it.” Corinne started selecting files and the printer hummed into action. It was fast, Banks noticed.

  “Can you also copy the contents to another thingamajig?”

  “You mean a removable USB hard drive?”

  “Whatever. Can you do it?”

  “Of course I can. Or at least I could if I had a spare one. Will a CD do?”

  “Fine,” Banks said. “Just as long as we have a copy. The CD, as well.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “I’m going to post it to myself,” said Banks. “That way I’ll have a backup.”

  “But it might mean nothing at all. Maybe Roy’s just run off with his new girlfriend. Have you thought of that?”

  Banks had. “Look,” he said, “it’s true that I don’t know Roy very well, and I’ll take your word that he’s an imaginative and bold businessman rather than a crooked one, but you didn’t hear the phone call. He sounded scared, Corinne. He tried to make light of it but he did say it might be a matter of life and death. Is that like him?”

  Corinne frowned. “No. I mean, I’m not saying he’s a hero or anything, but he doesn’t usually back down from difficult situations, and he’s not an alarmist. Maybe he’s been kidnapped or something?”

  “Has he ever mentioned that possibility?”

  “No. But you hear about it sometimes, don’t you?”

  “Not that often. But trust me,” Banks said, “something’s wrong. There are just too many loose ends. The missing computer, for a start. If someone went to the trouble to take Roy’s entire computer and all the storage devices they could find, then doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? They only missed the USB drive and the CD because both were hidden.” Hidden in plain view, Banks might have added, like Poe’s purloined letter. “According to his neighbor Malcolm Farrow, when Roy got in the car with the other man, neither was carrying anything. Someone must have gone back and taken the computer stuff between about half past nine last night and the time I arrived early this afternoon.”

  “Has it occurred to you that he might have come back and taken it himself?” Corinne asked.

  “Why should he? Where would he have taken it? Besides, his car’s still in the garage. He doesn’t own another, does he?”

  “No. Just his darling Porsche. You’re right, if he went anywhere, he’d have taken the Porsche. He loves that car.”

  “I don’t suppose he has another house, does he? Somewhere he’d go if he had to make a run for it? A villa on the Algarve, perhaps?”

  “Roy’s not particularly fond of Portugal. And he doesn’t own a place in Tuscany or Provence, or anywhere else, as far as I know. At least he never took me to one. He loves travel and holidays, but he says it’s too much hassle owning property abroad. It ties you down to just one place.”

  “He’s probably right.”

  Corinne bit on her lower lip. “Now you’ve got me really worried.”

  Banks put his hand on her shoulder, then took it away quickly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. She didn’t r
eact. “I’ll find Roy,” he said. “But let’s have a look at some of these files first. They might help us find out where to start looking. You know more about his business affairs than I do.”

  “That’s not saying much. Anyway, there’s nothing here that looks even the remotest bit dodgy.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Corinne faltered a little. “Well, I don’t suppose I can, really. As I said, the drive isn’t protected or encrypted, and Roy’s hardly likely to write down references to importing heroin, is he?”

  “So there’s no way of telling?”

  As Corinne spoke, she opened and scanned various files. The printer was still running. “Not from these files. Everything looks aboveboard. I think if he were trying to hide that sort of thing, there’d be something to set off alarm bells. It’s not that easy. Besides, as I’ve been trying to tell you, Roy’s not like that.”

  “What about the Money files?”

  “Simple income and expenditure. Company profit-and-loss sheets. Investment returns. Bank statements. Some offshore banking. His finances are in pretty good shape.”

  “Roy did a lot of offshore banking?”

  “Anyone working at his level of income has to. It’s a matter of keeping tax liabilities as low as possible. It’s not illegal. Mostly we’re looking at memos and correspondence here. You are, of course, welcome to examine them all at your leisure, especially as you took them in the first place, but I’d say you’d be wasting your time. Roy’s on the board of a few hi-tech companies, mostly interested in miniature information-storage devices, like that USB hard drive, flash memory cards, that sort of thing. Given the way the world’s going, with mobiles, digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players, and various combinations, it seems a wise enough area to be in. Smaller is better. As a board member, he’s paid dividends.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Recently Roy’s become interested in private health care. I remember him talking about it. Look.” She activated a PowerPoint presentation that extolled the virtues, and profits, of investing in a string of cosmetic-surgery clinics. “He’s on the board of a chain of health centers, a pharmaceutical company, a fitness club.”