by Janet Neel
‘Green button,’ her husband instructed, squeezing through a traffic light, the flat of his right hand on the horn.
‘Matthew? A fire? At the Caff?’ She looked helplessly over at her husband.
‘Can he get in? No? Has he done 999? Yes? Tell him to wait there.’
They were going up Piccadilly at seventy miles an hour, snaking among a few bewildered cars, and she choked back a scream as they hurtled round into Haymarket, barely missing a wavering pedestrian. She apologised, palely, for her lapse, but they were through Trafalgar Square, going the wrong way up St Martin’s Lane, the horn a continuous scream, and blessedly they had stopped and John was out of the car running, like the big prop forward he had once been. I am not, she thought, going to sit here with cars swerving around me, feeling sick. I shall get out and try and breathe. She watched her moment and got out between cars and ran round on to the pavement as two police cars, sirens blaring, halted either end of their Volvo. She pointed wordlessly to the side of the building where John had been running and policemen poured after him. She stood, knowing she must keep out of the way, and saw the blue wave check, then come running back again, John in the middle with Matthew’s red head beside him, and congregate around the boarded-up frontage, then shockingly came the noise of gunfire, and they were in, disappearing through a narrow door in the boards, each man briefly silhouetted against the light.
She waited a minute then reached in and switched off the Volvo, collected her handbag and walked across to peer cautiously through the door. The huge room, brightly lit and littered with ladders and paint pots and trestle tables, was deserted. The whole hunt seemed to have been swallowed up, and she edged down one side, keeping to the wall where she could until she reached the kitchen, which was full of men, several talking on telephones. In the middle her husband in his shirt-sleeves was kneeling by a girl who was lying very still on the floor with another man working on her. She recognised Judith Delves and watched in shocked silence as John took over, calmly, while the man who had been working to revive her got up and dusted himself, gratefully. There was another cluster of people around another recumbent body, male this time, the other side of the big central counter, but they were not working on him; he was dressed in a white jacket, lying on his face in the classic recovery position. She stood on her toes to see who it was, wondering why he appeared to be wearing a black woolly cap; edging forward to get a better look, she slipped and had to save herself by seizing at a rack which rocked and rattled. She drew in breath, horrified, but John had not even heard her, locked in the struggle to save Judith Delves. The whole place smelt of smoke and there were black fragments every-where, fluttering round the body with the black hat who was beginning to stir. She opened her mouth to shout but two of the attendant policemen squatted instantly to turn the man over and help him to sit up. She saw Michael Owens’ bright blond hair as someone pulled off the black hat and he seemed to have a tea towel clenched in his left hand.
A noise on the far side of the kitchen distracted her, three men, armed with assorted oxygen canisters and stretchers, arrived at Judith Delves’ side. They hooked her on to an oxygen line and felt for her heart and took her away as swiftly as they had arrived, and John stood up and stretched and looked across the kitchen. Men surrounded him, waiting for instructions which he gave, briskly, and Michael Owens was removed, hung limply between two policemen. It was Matthew, finally, who saw that she was there, and made to come over to her, but she shook her head at him and waited for her husband to finish doing what he did so well.
Epilogue
‘That’s John now, Tris. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.’ She banged the phone down and ran to the door, getting it open as her husband’s key turned in the lock. He must, she knew, be exhausted. She had driven the Volvo home at 2 a.m. that morning, pausing only to remind her husband she existed and to tell him where the family car was going. She had felt a guilt-stricken sympathy with her little son who had developed a habit of climbing on to her knee and taking her face in both hands to make quite sure she was listening to him; only deference to John’s position in the Metropolitan Police hierarchy had prevented her from doing the same in the crowded kitchen of Café de la Paix. He came through the door, white with exhaustion, and she waited impatiently while his driver deposited two briefcases and a coat in the hall and said goodnight.
‘I haven’t eaten,’ he said, kissing her, and she led him to the kitchen and installed him at the table with a huge whisky while she clattered about. He had been on his feet since the morning of the day before and was done, physically, but he was engaged in the little activities of a man settling himself in his home, peering suspiciously at the post, fishing a piece of junk mail out of the waste-paper basket to reassure himself he was not being deprived of some life-changing treat.
‘Will in bed?’
‘Only just. Could you wait to look at him in case he wakes?’
‘‘Course.’ He finished his whisky, rose to get another, and stopped beside her at the stove. ‘You got home all right?’
‘The earthquake was a bit of bother but it was fine otherwise.’
‘Good.’ She waited, flipping over the steak, while he poured a drink. ‘What did you say?’
She laughed. ‘I wondered if you were with me. Your supper’s ready, get outside it so you can talk.’ She sat opposite him, with a soda water with a dash of white wine, which was all the baby would let her drink.
‘What made you do that spectacular U-turn?’ she asked, when she could stand it no longer, and most of his plateful had disappeared.
‘You said Owens had picked a quarrel.’
‘That was true.’
‘I realised why.’ He finished the potatoes and sat back in his chair, stretching, less pale now but eyes heavy with tiredness. ‘He needed time in the Caff office by himself to find what he was looking for.’
‘Ah. Which was?’
Her husband considered her and she realised she was being slow. ‘A letter, or letters to Selina?’
‘That’s right. He found the two he wanted – the two he had written and took them downstairs to burn them on the grill. Another few minutes and he’d have been away.’
‘So he was one of Mrs Marsh-Hayden’s lovers.’ She looked at her husband cautiously. He was blinking in the lights; she probably had about five minutes before he fell asleep, and she needed to get him upstairs before that happened. ‘Did he kill her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you get a confession?’
‘Not to murder. He claims accident. He says he meant only to frighten her.’
‘Darling, sorry, but why? I’ve heard of crime passionnel but it was – is – surely Judith he wants.’
‘I agree. Selina was blackmailing him.’
‘What for? And could he not just have paid?’ She had understood that Michael Owens, at thirty-eight, had already made a substantial fortune.
‘It wasn’t money, or not only. According to him she’d got pissed off with her own husband being always broke and she wanted a more reliable and shrewd one. So she seduced him, he says, and was putting on pressure for him to give up Judith and marry her instead.’
‘But she was married.’
‘Indeed so, but she wanted out. And Marsh-Hayden would apparently have divorced her, given … well, given the letters.’
‘Were his like the others?’
‘Well, yes, up to a point.’
‘Only he liked something even more peculiar and embarrassing?’ She knew better than to ask for further and better particulars. ‘At any event, Judith would have been put off if she’d been shown them.’
‘That was the threat of course,’ her husband said. He hesitated. ‘Was he right to worry? Would she have been so put off as to ditch him?’
He waited while his wife, very slightly pink around the cheek-bones, consulted some earlier experience.
‘It’s different with a husband,’ she said, finally. ‘A lover who liked something a bit out of th
e way might be fun – I mean, so long as it wasn’t torture or doing it with dogs – but speaking personally I’d feel uncomfortable if I discovered you really, really only liked it if I tied you to the stove and beat you first. Or the other way round,’ she added, conscientiously. ‘It might indeed have put Judith off, particularly if she was – as she was – having doubts about whether she really wanted to be married if she wasn’t going to be able to run her own shop.’ She reflected for a moment, saddened. ‘So he panicked and killed Selina without even trying it the other way – I mean, without even trying to confess to Judith.’ She stopped. ‘I never asked. Is she still recovering?’
‘Yes. In fact she’s in reasonable shape for someone who was half strangled by her fiancé.’
‘That wasn’t an accident, of course.’
‘No. But by then he was in the business of saving his skin. He killed Selina – by accident or not – and he killed her husband. We may not be able to make that one stick, but I’m clear about it. He knew that paracetamol could finish off someone with a rotten liver; he watched Tony Gallagher put four into a glass, and it gave him the idea. He could have given Richard another slug at the restaurant – they kept it everywhere – or even later; it was him who saw Richard actually into bed the night he died, when he was out of his head.’
‘Why kill Richard? Was he becoming suspicious?’
‘Don’t know whether he was actually becoming suspicious of Owens. But he had found more letters, and Owens might reasonably have feared he would go on looking.’
‘Where were the other letters? I mean, did you ever find them?’
‘In scraps in the kitchen. They came out of a drawer containing four-year-old bank statements.’
‘Ah. If you want to hide a tree, a forest is a good place. What would Richard have done if he had found them?’
‘Confronted him? Told Judith? In the end he’d have shown them to us, I assume, and then we’d have had a more careful look at Mr Owens, who didn’t seem to have a motive. He wanted to sell, of course, to get Judith out of the business, but it wasn’t as if he needed the cash. But if he didn’t get the letters back, he knew he was at risk of losing her, and you’re right, she’s what he minds about. Asking after her even now, when he’s put her in hospital.’ He had finished his steak and was gazing at his empty plate, thoughtfully.
She got up and put her arms round him. ‘Come upstairs. I’m not going to be able to carry you, now I’m pregnant.’
‘Did you tell Will?’ he asked, following her, heavily.
‘Yes. He doesn’t believe it.’
‘Poor kid’s got a sad disillusionment ahead,’ her husband said, stumbling to the bathroom, pulling off clothes as he went.
‘Madame? Jacques on reception. Mrs McLeish is here and Mr Sutherland.’
‘I’ll come, Jacques.’ Judith considered the two men at the big table at the other end of the office. In the massive clear-out they had finally achieved last week, four years’ worth of papers had been boxed and put into storage against the unlikely contingency that anyone would want them again, and empty filing cabinets sold or given away so that there was now space. And light, made brighter by glistening white paint and a couple of large abstracts. That had been Brian Rubin’s doing; he had been uncompromising about the need for a decent uncluttered office and he had been absolutely right. Everything seemed easier, including the management accounts; and there again his advent had been a liberation; the Gemini Group’s accounting system was modern and easy to operate, and the price of updated computers and a software licence had been trivial in comparison to the time it saved.
‘Francesca’s just arrived. Do you want to come down for tea, or are you and Tony still busy?’
‘Nah, we’ve cracked it, haven’t we, Bri? Francesca’s husband decided to let her come here then.’ Tony Gallagher in street clothes got up and stretched.
‘Well, after all, we’ve been open two weeks now,’ Brian Rubin observed, carefully, not looking at her. ‘And the case is closed as far as he is concerned.’
Judith didn’t look at him either; it was still difficult to talk easily about the fact that Michael Owens was in a prison hospital, officially unfit to plead but unofficially understood to be guilty of two murders and two failed attempts.
The three of them trooped downstairs; by common unspoken consent no one was using the back lift and plans for reorganising the kitchen would see it eliminated in the quiet period after Christmas. The restaurant sparkled, immaculately redecorated, as fresh and clean as when it had been opened first, four years before. It was the dead period of the afternoon but staff were deployed setting up for the evening; Café de la Paix had been booked to capacity at lunch since it reopened, was well filled from 6 to 10.20 p.m. and markedly overbooked after that when the post-theatre crowds arrived, exposing mercilessly the limits of a too small kitchen. Tony Gallagher who, four weeks ago, had come straight back to work from hospital to get the Café reopened, was in serious need of a week off but even that seemed not impossible given the quality of the sous chefs he had managed to recruit.
‘You’re looking tired.’ Francesca McLeish rose to greet her and Judith smiled at her gratefully. It had been Matthew Sutherland, most visibly, and Francesca, working undercover, who had kept the show on the road while she and Tony had recovered from their injuries and all parties had absorbed the first stunning shock. It had taken a little time to understand that a friend and partner had been responsible for the death of two partners and for putting another two – one the woman he had expected to marry – into hospital. Matthew Sutherland had conceived it as part of his duty to a client to take over supervising the conversion, taking leave from Graebner Associates to run from hospital bed to site office, bearing cheques, instructions and materials for days until Judith had discharged herself from hospital, still shocked and muffled in polo-neck sweater and scarf to disguise livid bruising. Tony Gallagher, pale, thin and having to sit down heavily every twenty minutes, had got back on site three days after her.
Francesca, who had been on the verge of collecting William from the base of a potted plant, realised with relief that Matt was going to pick him up. ‘Going to have a baby,’ he was announcing, pulling Matt’s hair to make him pay attention.
‘Congratulations, old boy. That’ll be a real treat.’
Not what he’ll get, his mother thought, sadly. She could still remember her own disappointment when her brother Charlie arrived and she had found that not only did he absorb much of her mother’s attention but he was also not at all interested in playing and appeared to spend most of the day asleep. She watched sardonically as Matt, easily bored by small children, unloaded her son on Brian Rubin who received him with the ease of the experienced father. She grinned at him; she had come to like him very much over the last five weeks. She had gone on visiting Judith Delves in hospital despite John’s involvement in the case, feeling strongly that her support must not be withdrawn. She had been startled to find Judith refusing to contemplate giving up a place which must be full of bad memories, and where the shareholding was in an inextricable mess, mostly held in the nerveless hands of trustees or executors. But in practice, as she had advised long ago, confusion and legal uncertainty had played into Judith’s hands. She had had to accommodate Brian Rubin who was the legal owner of Richard Marsh-Hayden’s thirty-two and a half per cent shareholding, but she had strong cards to play as well, given her own fifteen per cent, her control over Tony Gallagher’s five per cent and the fact that Michael Owens, when coherent, was insisting that his thirty-two and a half per cent should be hers. Selina’s fifteen per cent was still in the hands of her executors, but they had no idea what to do with it and it had been possible to reach agreement that her trustees should hold it as a passive shareholding. It was not perhaps a classic company structure, but it was stable, after a fashion, and would certainly hold while the restaurants were trading profitably.
‘Brian,’ she said, under cover of an animated discussion between
Matt, Judith and Tony, ‘how is Gemini doing?’
‘A lot better, for all I’ve been busy here. Well, it’s the run up to Christmas, isn’t it? January’s going to be the difficult one.’ He was looking cheerful, despite it all, and she considered him.
‘You all seem to be getting on well here.’
He glanced at the others, but seeing them engrossed, lowered his voice. ‘In a few months’ time I think we’ll get it right and put the groups together.’ He saw her face. ‘I’m not banking on it, Fran, but it’d be better for her.’
‘If she had a decent shareholding.’ Francesca, who had stuck by Judith through the negotiations, went automatically into that mode, and he laughed.
‘She would. It’d pay me.’ He reached past her, obedient to Will’s demand for crisps.
That probably was how it would come out, she thought, slowly, and it would indeed be better for Judith to be a treasured managing director for this lively tough. She smiled at him, and held out her arms for her son, and they bent together to put him into his pushchair. A good man, for all his excursion with Selina, and a kindly father.
‘I must go – I’m meeting John.’
Brian Rubin was looking over her head. ‘He’s come to fetch you.’ He tightened the last strap conscientiously round Will and turned the pushchair so they could both see the big man in the grey suit coming past the glittering mirrors towards them. And then she had to get Will out of his violently rocking pushchair again so that he could greet his father, and then they were on their way, passing the first of the pre-theatre clients.