Risking It All

by Ann Granger

  ‘You do know who I am, don’t you? Really?’ I asked encouragingly, giving her a chance to come clean.

  Flora tilted her chin and fixed me with her brittle blue stare. ‘I’ve no idea who you are. There’s no reason why I should believe anything you say, and even less why I should care.’

  I was forced to stumble on. ‘At least you know my mother, Mrs Wilde, I know you do. You haven’t heard from her in years but please, let me bring you up to date, explain why I’m here.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said discouragingly. ‘I suppose I can’t stop you. I repeat, it won’t be of any interest to me. You’re wasting your time and mine.’

  I let that go, even though I was beginning to fear I was. ‘I don’t know how much you knew about my mother when you met her some years ago,’ I began, ‘but she had just left my father – and me. I was seven then. We didn’t hear from her again. We didn’t know where she was or even if she was alive. That’s important, right?’

  She didn’t reply. She knew how to use silence as a weapon.

  I was getting annoyed. I hadn’t wanted to come here. It hadn’t been my idea. Flora was in a situation she didn’t like but, heck, so was I! Why couldn’t she make this easier for both of us?

  ‘Yours isn’t the only life she’s walked back into, you know,’ I said. ‘She walked back into mine too. She had a private detective friend track me down.’

  Flora twitched at the words ‘private detective’. Her lips moved but no words came out and she pressed them firmly together as if to prevent any escaping.

  ‘He’s out of the frame now, so you don’t have to worry about him,’ I said hastily. ‘But he found me and I agreed to go and see my mother because she hasn’t got long and is in a hospice. This one.’ I showed her the same piece of paper I’d shown Mrs Mackenzie and Ben, with the hospice name and phone number.

  Flora barely glanced at it. ‘I still don’t see this gives you any valid reason for coming here.’

  ‘Mum asked me to come,’ I said. ‘You’re not supposed to refuse the request of a dying person. It’s a difficult thing to do, anyway. I couldn’t refuse her. I didn’t want this job she gave me. But I’m doing it because it matters more to her than anything, right now at the end of her life, that she make contact with you, even if it’s only through me.’

  ‘I can’t think why,’ she said coldly. ‘I can’t think why she should want to do that.’

  ‘Mrs Wilde,’ I began, ‘I know what happened and why. I understand. Your baby had sadly died and—’

  ‘No!’ She spoke so violently that I was silenced. She stared at me for a moment than appeared to make up her mind. ‘No, she didn’t. My baby didn’t die. Eva’s did.’

  ‘W-what . . .’ I babbled.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she burst out. ‘You say yourself you hardly know your mother and yet you seem to have accepted everything she’s told you. Of course I remember her. I’ve spent years trying to forget her, thank you! She had a baby at St Margaret’s but it died and she took it very badly. She even went dotty for a bit. She was convinced her baby was alive but had been switched with a dead one by the hospital for some reason. I mean, how barmy can you get? She took it into her head that our baby was hers. We had to move house to get away from her. I can’t believe, after all these years, that she’s still persecuting us. I can only suppose that, in her present condition, her mind is wandering again and she’s taken up the old fancy. Naturally, I’m sorry she’s dying.’

  No, she wasn’t. She couldn’t hide the surge of relief in her voice. I was badly shaken and didn’t know what to believe. It was plausible. What did I know of my mother?

  Yet something in Flora’s expression made me hesitate to accept her version. She was watching me now with a kind of triumph. Because she’d whipped the carpet from under my feet? Or at the thought that the biggest threat to her family was about to be removed permanently?

  Her look had become calculating. ‘Go and tell her you’ve spoken to me, if you must,’ she said. ‘If it will make her happier at the end. You have, I suppose, to indulge her. Tell her, if you like, that we’re all very well. However, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for you to come again, or to try and contact any of us again. I might say, too, that in future, should the occasion arise, perhaps you ought to be a bit more careful before you start agreeing to carry out dying requests.’

  She’d hit the nail on the head there, whatever the truth of the matter.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell her.’ I stood up to go, and as I turned, I saw behind me on a dresser a photograph of the type schools have taken of pupils. It showed a fair-haired girl in a uniform shirt and a tie. ‘Is this—?’

  I’d barely got the words out when Flora moved, darting past me to the dresser, seizing the picture in its frame and slamming it face down. Her face had contorted with rage and now it was my turn to step back in alarm.

  ‘If you go anywhere near my daughter,’ her voice was low and shaky, but there was so much pure rage in it the effect was twice what it would have been if she’d shouted, ‘I’ll kill you.’

  I don’t know what I could have replied to that, but in the event, I didn’t get a chance. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. I shouldn’t have been. I’ve mixed in some pretty rough company in my time, the sort that prefers fists to words. But Flora wasn’t like that. Or I thought she wasn’t. That pretty little doll-like creature? In this nice middle-class home? All that organic food?

  She swung a haymaker that caught me in the midriff and knocked the breath right out of me. I just folded up in agony on the floor. She was boiling with fury and began kicking me. Fortunately, past experience and an instinct for self-preservation came to my aid and I grabbed her foot, hanging on to it for grim death.

  ‘Let go!’ she shrieked.

  Not bloody likely, as someone else said. So she could kick my head in?

  She grabbed something from the table, one of the groceries, a tin. She began swatting at me with that. I managed to get to my knees as the blows rained down, still hanging on to her ankle, though instinct made me want to throw my arms over my head. I shoved hard with my shoulder at her knees. She went down with a crash.

  Freed, I scrambled up and gripped the table for support. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I gasped. ‘Are you bonkers or what?’

  ‘Get out!’ she spat at me from the floor. Her pretty little face was contorted and unrecognisable. Spittle flew from her mouth. ‘Get out, get out, GET OUT!’

  I got out. There are too many handy weapons in a kitchen and I wasn’t going to wait around until Flora put her hand on one.

  Well, that’s it, Fran, I told myself on my way home. Mission accomplished. As far as it was accomplishable. I hadn’t seen Nicola but I’d glimpsed a picture. I had a message from Flora that the family was well. I’d seen the house Nicola lived in, and very comfortable it was too, in a nice area. All of that ought to satisfy my mother. Oughtn’t it?

  I certainly hoped so. My head was still ringing from being clouted with healthy eating products, and my diaphragm yelled protest at me every time I breathed.

  I was back in Camden and nearly at the shop, looking forward to sitting down with a mug of tea, when a car drew up to the kerb beside me. The window rolled down.

  ‘Miss Varady?’ called an official voice. ‘We’ve been looking for you. Inspector Morgan wants a word.’

  The station tea hadn’t improved since my last visit, nor had Morgan’s dress sense. She wore a navy jacket teamed with a droopy navy skirt and looked like a health visitor. I was still convinced she bought her clothes from those ads in the newspapers which invite you to buy one skirt and get the second half-price, all direct ex-factory prices.

  ‘Where were you this morning?’ she demanded, not beating about the bush.

  A warning bell jingled, or rather, given the state of my aching head, clanged. ‘I’ve got to go out sometime,’ I said. ‘I’m not a prisoner in my own garage, am I? I should have thought yo
u could’ve guessed I’m flat-hunting. I’ve been asking round about a new place.’

  ‘Is that how you got that lump on your forehead?’

  I touched my forehead. Something there felt like half a boiled egg and growing.

  ‘Oh, that,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘I walked into something in the dark, in the garage. Hari’s got a lot of junk in there.’

  She uttered a sort of disbelieving growl. ‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘What with?’ My brain wasn’t functioning as well as it needed to.

  ‘With the flat-hunting.’ She gave me a mirthless grimace imitating a smile.

  ‘Oh, that. No.’

  ‘Well, you can’t go on living in that garage!’ she said sternly.

  ‘That’s what you brought me in here to tell me?’

  That gained me another wintry smile. She folded her hands on the tabletop between us and contemplated me for a moment or two. I knew she was working out a change of approach so I was more than half prepared for it when she began, ‘You have problems, Fran, and I recognise they’re serious ones. But believe me, you’re not the only one finding life hard going.’

  ‘I never thought I was,’ I countered. ‘But knowing everyone’s got something bugging them doesn’t help me. You’re going to tell me how tough it is for you, aren’t you? I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but as far as I’m concerned, so what? I deal with my troubles. You deal with yours.’

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ she returned drily. ‘The one thing I’ve learned not to expect is understanding or sympathy from the general public. Most don’t have the slightest concept of how hard we have to work to keep the peace and solve the crimes in an area the size of metropolitan London, with that density of population. They don’t think of the harrowing scenes of crime we attend, the decomposing bodies we have to view, the truly horrific tales of abuse we hear, the distraught relatives we have to reassure or console.’

  I’d actually heard this argument before, and the obvious question it begged was: so why do you persist with this career?

  She was ahead of me. ‘I can see it in your face. You’re thinking, if she can’t stick the heat, she ought to stay out of the kitchen. I can stick the heat, Fran. What I can’t stick, and I know I’ve told you this before, is being messed around. I don’t have the time to spare for that.’

  She sat back and frowned. ‘You know the one thing that always gets to me in TV cops series or crime novels? Mostly the detecting officer only has one case on his desk. He spends the entire time chasing down one villain. If only! Rennie Duke’s murder is my biggest case at the moment. A murder’s got to take priority. You’ve got very little time in a murder case. Three, four days tops. After that you’re chasing a cooling trail. So I’ve no choice but to put the pressure on.’

  ‘So put it on someone else, not on me,’ I grumbled.

  ‘You’re what I’ve got. Perhaps I should be concentrating on someone else. Perhaps you’d like to tell me who that person is? No? I thought not. Put it this way: until you do, or until you tell me whatever it is you’re hiding – no, Fran, please! Do us both a favour. I know there’s something.’

  I closed my mouth.

  ‘So, until that happy time, you, Fran, are the object of my concentrated attention. And if you can’t stand the heat, you know what to do to turn it down, or even off altogether, right? You might also bear in mind that I don’t have unlimited patience and that there’s such a thing as obstructing police enquiries. Please remember that also calling on my attention are a couple of armed robberies, a ram-raid, a nurse who’s gone missing and a case of arson which didn’t result in a death only by some miracle. OK, I’m not on my own, I’m part of a team. But even so, there are only so many working hours in any day. Every Joe Public who comes through the door thinks his problem is the most important, even if it’s a lost cat, and the police aren’t doing enough. Have you got the message, Fran?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I told her. ‘You’ve made it clear. I’m not thick.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Which is why I begrudge having to take the time to explain all this to you when you’re smart enough to suss it out for yourself! It’s also why you’re sitting here now. I’m giving you a chance to review your evidence to date. I understand if, under stress of circumstances, something may have slipped your mind when we spoke before. Finding a body’s not nice. But I’m sure you’ve been thinking it all over in the meantime. So, is there any little thing? Best to clear the air.’

  In her own way, she was playing fair. She’d worked out that I was sitting on information somewhere along the line. She was practically doing somersaults giving me a chance to speak up. She was the only copper I knew who’d have been that decent and it really gave me grief that I couldn’t take the hand she was metaphorically stretching out.

  I told her I had nothing to add to my previous statement. Then, struck by a thought, I asked, ‘Have you lot been out at Egham bothering my mother?’

  ‘Calm down,’ she urged. I must have sounded pugnacious. ‘No, we haven’t spoken to her. We did check that your mother was in the hospice. You would have expected that, wouldn’t you? The senior staff member to whom I spoke was adamant that your mother is in no state to be interviewed. It seems a doctor’s signed statement to that effect was ready and available. That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Almost as if she was expecting us. She has since faxed us a medical report and we have to accept it.’

  Good for Sister Helen.

  ‘But you, Francesca, are certainly in a state to be questioned, and believe me, I’m going to keep firing questions at you until I’m satisfied you’ve got nothing else to tell me.’

  ‘I can’t stop you,’ I told her. So long as she left Mum alone, that was all that mattered. Although I wasn’t sure how fit a state I was in just at that moment, I was still confident I could handle anything she lobbed at me.

  ‘When did you last see your mother?’

  Didn’t some old misery in a Puritan outfit ask a similar question of a kid in a silk suit standing in front of a table?

  ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ I told the latter-day female Roundhead interrogating me. ‘And yes, I did warn Sister Helen that you might turn up. I don’t care about your investigation. My business is to protect my mother.’

  ‘My business is to solve a murder,’ she countered.

  ‘Mum didn’t have anything to do with that. How could she?’

  Morgan studied me, murmured, ‘Hmm . . .’ then asked, ‘How is she?’

  I told her that my mother was hanging on.

  Morgan said, ‘I really am sorry, Fran. I don’t like badgering you at a time like this, but, as I said, I’ve got to run down any lead. That means you.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything about Rennie Duke,’ I said wearily. ‘I hardly knew the man.’

  ‘Then perhaps I can tell you something about him,’ Morgan said pleasantly. ‘He had been in business as a private detective for some years and we knew him quite well. We had nothing against him. He had been warned a few times for prying a little too enthusiastically on behalf of clients. He was twice charged with illegal use of surveillance equipment, but in the end there wasn’t enough evidence and the charges were dropped. In fact, over-enthusiasm was Rennie Duke’s main fault. There were never any official complaints. But noticeably, clients seldom used him twice, and it wasn’t because he hadn’t done as they wanted. The local solicitors stopped using him, and private detectives get a lot of work that way. No work coming in from the legal trade meant Rennie probably couldn’t be too fussy about the clients he did get. But as I said, even the dodgier ones shied off after one experience. No one could ever quite put a finger on what was wrong with Rennie,’ Morgan mused. ‘Perhaps there wasn’t anything and he was whiter than the driven snow.’

  ‘He was a creep,’ I said. ‘Even I could see that. But it’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘No, Fran, it’s not a crime. But murder is, and—’ Morgan leaned towards me and I couldn’t p
revent myself drawing back defensively – ‘nobody and nothing is going to get between me and solving this one. Just bear it in mind, would you, Fran?’

  ‘Will do,’ I promised. ‘Can I go now?’