by Janet Neel
Francesca reached for some more coffee to give her time. ‘So Richard Marsh-Hayden brought him in to Café de la Paix and they put up the bulk of the money, presumably?’
‘Selina and I put up £20,000 each, but we got extra shares for it.’
‘Sweat equity. So Michael must have liked the look of you, even then.’
Judith laughed. ‘He didn’t spend that much time thinking about any of it. He had a huge tax bill that year. He was only thirty-four but he’d done some enormous bond, and he was just looking for somewhere to invest the loot. I tease him about it now – he thought Selina was wonderful and could make anything work. I’m not sure he even saw me.’
‘He’s a banker. He checked, he liked the look of you as a business person even if it took him four years to see you as a female person.’
Judith nodded, her face soft with remembering. ‘I always thought he was very attractive, but I … well, he wasn’t taking much notice and he wasn’t at the Caff very much. He’s very busy, he was working awful hours – I mean worse than we do at the Caff – and at weekends he used to go off with the Territorials.’
‘Really? Had he been in the Army?’
‘No, but he always wanted to be. Like Richard. Well, like his own father. Only he said he could not afford it, he needed to make his fortune. So he became a banker and Territorial.’
‘When did he find time to court you?’
Judith blew her nose, looking much better. ‘We decided to do a second restaurant out of the profits, and we needed cash. So Richard made him come to a couple of meetings and I had to tell him all about it. This is just over six months ago. Then we got this offer for the shares, and we all had to spend a lot of time on it, and after that, well …’ She was blushing, and Francesca grinned at her.
‘Events moved quickly.’
‘Yes. Really very quickly.’ Judith looked down. ‘I mean, I was afraid I’d made an awful mistake – I’d always fancied him and I thought …’
‘That you’d gone too fast? I keep saying this, but he’s a banker, your Michael, and they don’t usually have ill-considered affairs with their associates.’ She smiled kindly on her visitor, feeling many decades older, but realised Judith was amused.
‘He wasn’t in banking mode when we … well, the first time. He was just back from a TA weekend.’
‘Ah.’ Francesca, momentarily wrongfooted, started to laugh. ‘I see. Conquering hero stuff. What fun.’ She considered this history soberly, remembering her grandmother’s edict that if you had nothing pleasant to say you should remain silent. She reached for a sandwich – the affairs of Gladstone College would not permit her falling over in the office – and munched, keeping an eye on her guest.
Judith was staring into space. ‘I suppose there isn’t a lot of point in delaying a sale for eight weeks,’ she said, bleakly.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Francesca swallowed the last corner of the sandwich. ‘The horse may talk. Do you know the story? It’s about Louis XIV who is said to have condemned some felon to death but the man pleaded that if the most Majestic would spare his life he would teach his horse to talk.’
‘Louis XIV’s horse?’
‘The felon didn’t have one. So the King agreed and gave him a year to achieve this. The man’s friends were naturally concerned but he pointed out that in a year the King might be dead, or he might be dead, or the horse might be dead. Or the horse might talk.’ She met Judith’s considering look. ‘I’m not being critical; that story is the justification for procrastination when action offers no possible advantage.’
‘That is how I heard it.’ Judith nodded, looking amused and not at all plain. ‘You’ve been very kind, Francesca, and I feel a lot better. May I talk to you again?’
‘Of course.’
They kissed with real affection this time and Francesca stood to wave as Judith got into a big Volvo Estate, the more expensive model of the one she drove herself.
*
‘I’ll come to the Caff.’
‘No. I don’t want to talk here. I’ll come round your place now, when I’ve changed. Say three fifteen.’
‘OK, Tony, that’s fine.’
Matt Sutherland put the phone down and stared at it, thoughtfully. He pressed a buzzer.
‘Peter. You in?’
‘Demonstrably.’
‘I mean, are you free? For a consultation with your Associate.’
‘Come on up.’
Matthew prided himself in being able to do all three flights of stairs to Peter Graebner’s eyrie at the top of the building in under a minute, but it had the disadvantage of leaving him unable to speak when he got there. He slumped into a chair, sucked in a breath of almost pure nicotine and started to cough.
‘Penalty of all this keep-fit nonsense, my boy. Just sit there till you can breathe. I could open a window.’
‘That’d spoil it,’ Matthew managed to say; and his senior partner looked at him over his glasses.
‘It is, I take it, the Marsh-Hayden murder which has brought you to me.’
‘It is.’ Matthew had a final cough and considered the top of the desk which was piled with even more papers than the day before. Peter Graebner himself, small with curly grey hair sliding back from a high forehead, looking like a distinguished rat, was huddled behind the big desk, surrounded by overfilled ashtrays and a Dickensian collection of writing implements. He pushed up his bottle-thick spectacles and peered at his colleague.
‘Tony Gallagher works in one of the two restaurants, I understand.’
‘Supervising chef for both, but mostly does his shifts in the West End.’
‘And do we think he was involved in the murder of Mrs Marsh- Hayden? The Hon. Mrs, I should say.’
‘We bloody hope he isn’t coming in to tell me he did it.’
‘Don’t let him do that, Matthew. We’d have to pass him on somewhere else, much less well qualified than ourselves. Do you have any reason to suppose he did it?’
‘Well, she was found in his deep freeze. Inside a black plastic bag.’
‘Really? Along with the ice-cream and the emergency steaks?’
‘You didn’t read the papers? All the management fell over themselves to point out that it was an old freezer, not in use.’
Peter Graebner considered the point, chewing one arm of his glasses. ‘Except it was. In use, I mean.’
‘They meant not officially. Not for anything else.’
‘I expect that makes me feel a bit better. How long had she been there? Ah no, I see, they probably don’t know.’
Matthew nodded approvingly. ‘You’re catching up, knew you would. She’d not been seen for a week or so, or not by anyone they’ve found.’
Peter meditated, leaning back in his chair, cigarette drooping from his lips. ‘There’s a husband of course. Our client, despite his casual attitude to frozen storage, won’t be the first person the police are looking at.’
‘No.’
‘You are sounding doubtful? Ah, I remember now, you told me. They are trying to sell the restaurant. Or so your client hoped.’
‘Yeh. And the deceased was the one who was holding up the sale.’
‘Oh dear.’ Peter’s chair tilted forward, and Matthew understood that his attention was now fully engaged. ‘How did she die?’
‘Strangled.’
‘Mm. And he’s a Gallagher. Martin Gallagher is, let me see, half-way through a sentence for aggravated assault. And Kevin, the younger one, is away for assault and battery, I remember. What a pity. Hoped that was a brand saved from the burning.’
The six-partner law firm had been founded by Peter Graebner, who had trained originally for the rabbinate, but had decided, abruptly, that his proper duty lay with ensuring that the poor and the deprived had access to the same panoply of legal rights as any of their more fortunate contemporaries. Among his other assets he had a compendious memory which rendered him independent of the firm’s up-to-date and efficient computerised systems.
&nbs
p; Matthew sat upright. ‘You’re assuming Tony did it?’
‘Well, someone did. But the husband’s the best bet, Matthew, remember. Statistically.’
‘That’s true, isn’t it?’ Matt said, gratefully, as the phone buzzed and a voice announced that Mr Gallagher was here now, for Matthew.
‘Try and get her to call you Mr Sutherland in front of the clients, will you?’
Matt clattered downstairs to receive his client, who was sitting staring out of the window. He had changed out of his chef’s whites into a navy bomber jacket, and he was unshaven, his jawline tense. Matthew was disconcerted suddenly to see him as one of the dangerously aggressive men who were part of their regular clientele rather than a key manager at two major restaurants.
‘Afternoon, Tony.’ He led him into the small interview room and sniffed, turning out an ashtray and a copy of the Express which, he saw, unfortunately featured his client on the front page.
‘Trouble is, they got a stock photo. For articles, like.’
Tony had secured a good deal of favourable publicity for himself and the group, but, as always, there was a downside. Most papers did indeed have good, recent pictures of him and of the highly photogenic Selina and had not hesitated to use them. Matthew studied his client anxiously.
‘You saw the police?’
‘Couldn’t miss them. I threw a wobbly when the health inspector found the body, but they took a statement today. Just about how long since I’d looked inside the freezer, like. They want to see me again, so I thought I’d talk to you first.’
‘I could come with you, if you’d rather,’ Matt offered.
‘I might. See, there’s something a bit difficult.’
Matt caught his breath. ‘Tony, you know that we’re all officers of the court, I mean …’
‘If I topped her, not to tell you? Well, I didn’t, don’t worry, mate. But we did have words, Madame and me, the evening she went off the air. I don’t want to find myself fitted up. It would suit some to blame the staff, I can tell you.’
Matthew breathed out slowly and organised his pad and pen. ‘What sort of words? And when?’
‘The Thursday you was in, before she disappeared. She come down to the kitchen and she was asking all sorts of questions – how many of this, what had that cost. So after a bit I ask her what she’s getting at, and she goes huffy and says she’s just checking on plate costs. So I tell her if she’s got anything she doesn’t understand we’ll go through it in the office only not right now when I’m checking staff for the service, yeh? She gets right uptight and says something that gets on my wick so I tell her to piss off out of my kitchen. And she says I better remember it isn’t me who owns the kitchen, so I call her a silly tart who ought not to be in the restaurant business. Or any business.’
‘Mm. To which she replied?’
‘That this restaurant wasn’t going to be sold until it had been made as profitable as it should be, and I’d better remember that and who was in charge.’
‘Was that all?’
‘I said she wasn’t in charge, whoever else was, being too busy getting her face in the papers and going shopping. But that was it.’
‘Anyone else hear any of this?’
‘There was a sous chef and a commis in. They may not have heard the words but they could have hummed the tune. And they’ll have said something, ‘course they will.’
‘That’s the right bet, yes.’ Matthew finished his notes and looked at them. ‘You really wanted to sell, Tony, didn’t you? Why? You reckoned to get a better job?’
‘That. And I need the money.’
Matthew hesitated. ‘I’d better know. Why do you need it?’ His client’s eyelids flickered, betrayingly, and Matthew waited for the lie.
‘I want to buy a house. Put down a big deposit, see.’
‘Just for yourself?’
‘What? Yes. Might have a mate to share.’
Tony Gallagher lived in his mother’s council flat which had more rather than less space now that both brothers were being otherwise accommodated by the state. The silence lengthened, but Matt was not at all uncomfortable with a hiatus.
‘I owe it.’
‘To whom?’
‘Some people.’
Matthew waited, patiently.
‘It’s a bet, isn’t it?’ Tony finally volunteered.
‘And they want paying.’ This was familiar territory but Tony stood to get £30,000 for his share; he must have been betting substantially.
‘Yeh. Thought I’d got it back Saturday but the cow fell over in the last race at Doncaster. I had a Yankee with three winners.’
‘How much do you owe?’
‘A bit.’
This was not a promising scenario. Selina Marsh-Hayden had been standing between his client and enough money to save said client from a beating at best. And they had quarrelled. And her body had been found in a deep freeze in his client’s back office, as it were.
‘You’d better have a lawyer with you when you talk to the fuzz,’ he said, soberly. ‘You want Peter?’
His client gave him a long careful look.
‘You my lawyer or not, sunshine?’
‘I’m your lawyer. I’m good but I’ve been qualified all of three months, while Peter’s been at it for thirty years.’
‘Yeh, he’s good. But I’ll stick with you.’
5
Judith Delves had spent the first hour of the morning sorting out staff rotas. For a wonder there had been enough staff both on the floor and in the kitchen to ensure that she would not be needed over the lunch service, so she had decided to get into the office. She knew that six months at the new site had left a gap here but was startled by its extent. Mary was an excellent book-keeper, in the sense that all the data got into the system, bills were paid, receipted and filed, VAT returns were made, correctly and regularly. But none of it had seemed to join up in her mind, no alarm bells had rung as the operating margins slipped and the overdraft crept up. Arguably the best book-keepers were like that, accurate recording machines. But what had Selina been doing? Well, numbers had never been her strong suit and she had presumably just not looked hard enough. Too busy chatting up the customers, Judith thought, instantly regretting the lack of charity towards her recently and horribly murdered friend. And come to that, she reminded herself acerbically, what had she been doing? She had been busy for long hours off site, but she could at least have got here and looked at the numbers, or checked the bank balance. She had done neither.
‘Judith? I’m sorry to interrupt you. I know you said not to, but Richard’s on the phone.’
Judith lifted her head from the pile of print-outs she was examining and made a neat mark in the corner.
‘Richard. How are you?’ And what a stupid question, she thought, appalled, to ask of a man whose wife had recently been found strangled and deep-frozen. Mercifully he ignored it, driven by his immediate needs.
‘Could you … that is, would you come round? I’ve had the police here, looking through Selina’s things, and I … Well, there’s all this stuff and I can’t … I can’t work out what to do with any of it. Her mother’s coming round later, but …’
She waited to hear what the ‘but’ was, but his voice trailed away. ‘Of course I’ll come, Richard. About twenty minutes in this traffic.’
It took longer, but by the time she arrived Richard seemed to have himself in hand. He took her into the immaculately decorated living-room. He had made himself a cup of tea, the television was on, and the dismembered crusts of a pizza lay on a plate beside it on an expensive glass coffee table. She had always found him alarming; his family was now poor but still very grand, in a faded way, and Richard had been brought up in a cold echoing palace in Shropshire in the full confidence that the eldest son of such a family could do anything he liked. Whatever the vicissitudes of his adult life, he still paid no attention at all to the niceties of conventional behaviour, or worried for one minute about what other people might think. He
and Selina were alike in this, being prepared to conduct any aspect of their lives in public, regardless of the number or composition of the audience. Typically, he did not thank her for coming, or ask if she wanted tea, which she would have liked, but plunged straight into his principal preoccupation.
‘She’s got an awful lot of stuff. Clothes, I mean. Whole spare room’s full. I need to sort them out.’
The spare room was a decent twelve foot by fourteen foot and one long wall was entirely made up of expensively designed cupboards. Richard was pushing sliding doors as she took in the dressing-table, glass top covered in a wild profusion of make-up, perfume, cotton wool, scissors and paper handkerchiefs. In the cupboards, clothes were hung in scurried rows and shoes tumbled all over the floor as the doors opened.
She started at the left-hand corner, trying to get a feel for what was there. Everything seemed to carry a designer label and of course they were all in a size ten or less. Indeed, you needed to be as slim as Selina and to have legs at least approaching her length to wear clothes like this, she thought, gazing enviously at a very short, very pretty A-line skirt which had probably stopped six inches above Selina’s smooth, brown knees. She glanced at Richard and saw that he was staring intently at the racks of clothes.
‘Bloody expensive.’
‘She always looked wonderful.’ This at least was a tribute she could pay ungrudgingly. ‘You helped her shop, didn’t you?’
‘Sometimes.’ He was still staring at the cupboards as if they might escape, and she decided she must get him downstairs again.
‘How much you reckon this lot cost, Judith?’
‘What?’ Well, if no one of the family wanted them, selling them was not a stupid idea; she would ring up one of the up-market Nearly New shops that she occasionally saw at the back of Selina’s glossy magazines.
‘A suit runs about £800, doesn’t it?’
‘St Laurent, yes, about that, Nicole Farhi a bit less, Jil Sander a bit more. I don’t know what you would get through a Nearly New shop, but say a third of that.’