by Alex Walters
Wentworth suddenly shivered. ‘It’s really turned cold, hasn’t it?’ she said. ‘I might need to turn the heating on.’ She rose and slammed the back door shut.
Zoe couldn’t feel it herself, though there was no doubt that the change in the weather was stark. She could hear the rattling of the rain against the patio windows, the downpour hammering on the skylights above them. The drive home wasn’t going to be fun, she thought. Some of the back roads in the vicinity were prone to flooding in weather like this. Even so, she felt reluctant to leave until it became clear that Wentworth no longer wanted her company.
Wentworth still seemed shaken by the news about Nolan. She looked haunted, shocked; even more than she had about the news of her own son’s death. She seemed almost to be willing Zoe to stay, as if for once she was afraid of being left alone. That in itself was unexpected. Zoe’s impression of Wentworth, right from their first meeting, had been one of utter self-sufficiency. Now, for the first time, she looked vulnerable, perhaps even a little lost.
Zoe decided it was time to push Wentworth a little harder. There was a risk that she might simply close down, perhaps even decide to show Zoe the door. But there was just a chance she might finally open up, give her a glimpse of what lay below that enigmatic facade. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘About leaving bodies in your wake?’
Wentworth stared at her for a moment. ‘Oh, God, dozens of them. More than I can count, probably. More than I know. A lot more than I know.’ She suddenly seemed conscious of what she was saying. ‘Not literally, of course. I mean people who’ve suffered from my business decisions. But that’s life, isn’t it? That’s how it works. Nobody’s ever given me a helping hand. Whatever I achieved in life, I’ve done it all myself.’ She tailed off, as if lost in thought. She was still taking mouthfuls of wine along with her coffee, and it occurred to Zoe to wonder how much she had already drunk.
‘Do you think that’s just the nature of business?’ Zoe asked. ‘Not everyone can be a winner, I suppose.’
Wentworth gave a shrug. ‘It’s the nature of my business. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. I don’t know. I’ve always believed there’s no room in this line of work for sentiment. If you’re soft, you just get crushed. In the end that helps no one, does it? It’s all very well whining on about a living wage and job security and all that stuff, but if the business goes under you’ll never get any of that. So the first priority is always to make money.’ She was sounding defensive now, as if Zoe had launched an attack on her business ethics. ‘That’s what I used to tell Ronnie.’
‘Your ex-husband?’
‘The very same. He had a good business brain. Good contacts, too. But he was soft as shit. We were never going to get anywhere as long as he was involved. Strictly small-time.’ She shook her head. ‘You just have to be ruthless. Do what it takes.’
Zoe was surprised to see that Wentworth’s eyes were damp with tears, her expression now almost that of a woman in mourning. She seemed to be shifting emotional gears even as Zoe watched. Perhaps the shock of her son’s death had finally hit her. ‘Are there things you regret? About the business, I mean?’
‘I’ve never done anything else,’ Wentworth said. ‘And I’ve never done it any other way. I wouldn’t have known how. There are moments, sometimes when I wake in the night, when I wonder if I’ve wasted my life. But by and large I think I’ve got it right. Until the last few months, anyway.’
Zoe looked up, suddenly alert. ‘The last few months?’ she asked casually.
Wentworth took another swallow of wine. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. I made the mistake of trusting someone else more than I trusted my own instincts.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe I was a bit too soft for once. But I’ve put that right now. Or at least I hope I have.’
‘In what way?’ Zoe tried to keep her tone neutral, as if she was simply making conversation.
‘I wasn’t properly in control.’ Wentworth waved a finger vaguely in Zoe’s direction, as if offering a personal admonishment. Zoe had little doubt now that Wentworth was at least slightly drunk. She’d almost polished off the bottle of wine by herself, and Zoe had a suspicion it might not have been the first of the afternoon. ‘There’s a lesson there. Everybody says you ought to delegate. But you can’t really. Or only the small stuff. Once you start delegating the big stuff, everything can slip away from you. You don’t know who you’re really dealing with.’
Zoe wasn’t sure she was really following any of this. ‘I can see you’ve got to be careful.’
‘I mean, you’ve met him, haven’t you? That bastard Hardy. Would you have trusted him?’
The direct question was unexpected. ‘Hardy? I’ve no idea,’ Zoe said. ‘I only met him briefly.’
‘I trusted him too much,’ Wentworth said. ‘I’m not sure what he’s led me into, but I’m sure as hell not going to go any further. There’s too much at stake, and these bastards seem to know far too much about me.’ She poured the last dregs of the wine from the bottle into her glass and swallowed them in a single mouthful. She rose and took another bottle from the rack in the corner of the kitchen. She opened the screw-top and poured a glass. ‘You sure you don’t want any?’
‘Better not,’ Zoe said. She was beginning to feel the conversation itself was in danger of going too far. But she also felt that Wentworth might be on the verge of a real revelation.
‘I mean, it’s genuinely scary,’ Wentworth continued. ‘It’s as if they’re been picking apart my life, bit by bit. As if they know every secret.’ She rose, still clutching her glass, and walked, slightly unsteadily, into the living room. Zoe followed, intent on maintaining the dialogue.
Wentworth was standing by the patio windows, staring out into the blackness. The rain was still pounding against the glass. The sun had set now and, although it was still only early evening, it felt like midnight, the garden pitch black beyond the glow from the kitchen. ‘It feels like they’re circling me. Growing closer. Just letting me stew until they’re ready…’ She seemed almost to have forgotten that Zoe was there, as if she were talking only to herself. ‘Christ, look at it out there. It’s unbelievable.’
Wentworth reached out and pressed a switch by the patio doors. Immediately, the patio area and the pool were flooded with light from a bank of spotlights positioned above the doors. The effect was that of a curtain being raised on a stage, and it was possible to see the seemingly endless rain crashing on to the surface of the pool and the tiles around it.
And then suddenly Wentworth screamed and, as if trying to shut out the night, she extinguished the lights, plunging the garden back into darkness.
Zoe had risen and was standing behind her. The glare of the light was still burned into her retinas and for a moment she could barely see. ‘What was it?’
‘He was out there. Just standing out in the rain, staring back in here. What the hell’s he doing?’
‘Who? Who was it?’
‘I threw him out earlier. Gave him an ultimatum, but he’s still there.’
‘Who is?’
‘Him. The person we were talking about.’ Wentworth was staring at her, her face pale. ‘Peter Hardy.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Well, that’s that,’ Annie said. ‘Christ.’
She’d spent the last half-hour on the phone to the forensics unit. As she’d expected, they’d tried to fob her off this late in the afternoon, but she had quickly managed to persuade them of the urgency of her query. DNA tests had been done on both bodies as a matter of routine, although the purpose had been only to enable them to be excluded from any subsequent forensic analysis. For that reason, the results hadn’t been entered on the national database, and it hadn’t occurred to anyone to compare the two results.
‘Spill the beans, then,’ Jennings said. ‘We’re all dying to know.’
‘No doubt about it. Chalmers and Justin Wentworth were indeed father and son.’
‘Christ,’ Jennings said. ‘And Michelle Wentworth didn’t think to mention
that when both were murdered on her doorstep?’
‘She’s been hiding stuff from the start,’ Annie said. ‘She and Hardy always seemed more interested in concealing their business from us than in helping us catch whoever killed Justin. I’m convinced that the list of supposed suspects that Hardy gave us was just a smokescreen.’
‘So what’s she got to hide?’
‘That’s the question. I felt it was something to do with the business, rather than anything directly to do with Justin.’
‘You said Chalmers suggested there was some kind of dodgy money behind their latest ventures?’
‘That was what Sheena said.’
‘So was Chalmers threatening to expose something?’ Jennings said. ‘Is that why he was taken out?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Colin Palmer said. ‘Remember I said I’d come back to the reason why Chalmers had kept these letters and not others? If you look through the ones he kept, my guess is that they weren’t retained just for sentimental value.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jennings asked.
‘Almost all the letters that Chalmers had kept make some reference to the way in which Wentworth was bending or breaking the procurement rules to win contracts. Sometimes with Chalmers’ help, but it was obviously just part and parcel of her business methods. A lot of it is fairly opaque in the letters but you can piece enough together to get the picture. And the picture’s far more incriminating for Wentworth than for Chalmers.’
‘So you think he was blackmailing her about that?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he’d just held these letters back as some kind of insurance policy. A way of screwing money or some other favour out of Wentworth if he needed it. Either way, I don’t think it’s accidental that he kept these letters and discarded others.’
‘So if he was prepared to blackmail her about that, whatever she’s involved in now might have created an even better opportunity to turn the screws on her,’ Jennings said.
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ Annie pointed out. ‘If Wentworth and Hardy were behind Chalmers’ murder, why would they dump his body outside Wentworth’s house? If that hadn’t happened, we probably wouldn’t have even thought to connect Chalmers’ death to Wentworth.’
‘Whatever the truth is, we clearly need to talk to Wentworth again urgently,’ Annie said. ‘Find out why she decided not to bother mentioning that she had such an intimate connection with both of the first two victims.’
‘Are we still assuming that Nolan’s death is connected to the others?’ Colin Palmer asked. ‘I can’t see there’s much of a connection. The link with Wentworth could easily be nothing but a coincidence.’
‘I’m not keen on coincidences,’ Jennings said. ‘Not in investigations. They always make me nervous. That’s really the only rationale for keeping the cases aligned. Mind you, I don’t know if it’s better to have one multiple killer or two separate killers. Maybe one of you could let me know. But in the meantime, yes, we need to talk to Michelle Wentworth now. If she’s playing silly buggers, whatever the reason, we need to know.’
Annie nodded. ‘Zoe should be over there already on one of her routine visits. I’ll get over there straight away. I want to see the whites of her eyes when we ask her about this. She’s a great one for the poker face, but she can’t keep hiding things from us for ever.’
* * *
‘You saw him too?’ Michelle Wentworth’s tone sounded almost accusatory.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ Zoe said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was definitely him. Why the hell was he out there on a night like this?’ Wentworth paused. ‘That’s the second question. The first question was how he got back in without me knowing. Shit!’ She jumped to her feet and hurried through to the hallway. Zoe followed her, and heard her muttering at the CCTV screens.
Wentworth looked up as Zoe approached. ‘I’ve been fucking stupid,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sitting here feeling safe, snug and secure, and I left the bloody gates open when I let you in.’ Her tone was accusatory, as if this had somehow been Zoe’s fault.
‘But whatever he’s up to out there, it’s still only Peter Hardy. He’s nothing to be concerned about, surely,’ Zoe said.
Wentworth stared at her. ‘I told you, I gave him an ultimatum and effectively threw him out of the house. So let’s just say that, for the moment, Peter and I are not quite the bosom buddies and business colleagues we once were. As to whether he’s anything to be concerned about, I’ve no real idea. All I know is that, for reasons best known to himself, he’s prowling around my house in the pouring rain and pitch darkness trying to scare the hell out of me.’
‘We don’t know that—’
‘Why the hell else would he be out there?’
Zoe had no ready answer to that. ‘Let me go and take a look out there. Maybe he’s ill or something.’
‘You don’t know him, do you? He can be a ruthless, cold-hearted bastard. I don’t trust him.’
Zoe took a breath. ‘Okay. I can call in some backup if you really think it’s needed. I don’t know how long it’ll take them to get here, but I can get it treated as a priority if you think there’s something to be concerned about.’
‘I don’t know,’ Wentworth said. She hesitated, and Zoe guessed she was thinking about the implications and possible consequences of summoning the police out here. Zoe was still unsure whether Wentworth really had seen Hardy, or whether this had been some further attempt at distraction, but for the moment she felt she had to take Wentworth at her word.
‘Are all the doors and windows locked?’ Zoe asked.
‘They should be,’ Wentworth said. ‘The security’s pretty tight here. Even the patio windows are extra-toughened glass. It would take a lot to break through them.’
‘You said Hardy could be ruthless. Is he a violent man?’
Wentworth looked momentarily taken aback by the question. ‘He’s never been violent with me, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t know. He’s always struck me as the type who’d do whatever it took to get what he wants. I don’t know what he might do.’
‘Okay, let’s double-check all the ground-floor doors and windows first, at least make sure there’s no risk of him effecting an entry without us knowing.’ Another thought struck her. ‘He doesn’t have his own keys, does he?’ She still wasn’t sure how close Wentworth and Hardy were, or at least had been. She’d had the sense previously that they were some kind of an item.
‘Christ, no,’ Wentworth said. ‘I don’t let anyone get that close.’
Which, Zoe supposed, was at least some kind of answer to her speculations. ‘So I’ll call in some support. We check the doors and windows. And then we can decide what to do next.’ It didn’t sound much, but Zoe supposed it was some kind of a plan.
The next few minutes were spent carrying it out. Zoe phoned back to the control room and asked them to get a car round urgently. Then between them they checked all the downstairs doors and windows, with Zoe finally ending up back in the kitchen, leaving Wentworth in the living room.
Like the patio doors, the back door was constructed of toughened glass. Despite Wentworth’s fears, Zoe decided to take one last look outside, conscious that it would be better to have some idea of Hardy’s movements if he really was still out there. The switch for the spotlights was beside the door. She pressed it, peering out as the patio was again flooded with light, steeling herself for the possibility that Hardy might now be standing closer to the house.
He wasn’t. The patio and poolside areas looked deserted, the rain pounding down as heavily as ever. She was about to extinguish the light when, peering for one last time, she saw something just at the far edge of the illuminated area.
She pressed her face to the glass and peered out into the glare of the spotlights. It was right at the edge of the light, very close to the point where Wentworth had claimed Hardy was standing. It took a few moments for Zoe’s eyes to adjust to the point where she could see what it was.
It was a body, lying on the grass beyond the pool,. From this distance, she could make out nothing but a pair of feet, the body itself lying further into the darkness. It was motionless. Perhaps her earlier thought that Hardy had been ill had been correct, after all. Though that failed to explain why he was in the rear garden, or why he hadn’t simply arrived at the front door if he’d come here to see Wentworth.
Zoe hesitated, unsure what to do. If it was Hardy, and he really was ill, she couldn’t just leave him out there. Finally, feeling she had no choice, she unlocked the back door and opened it far enough to allow her to slip out into the night.
The first few yards were under the shelter of the house, so she was able to take a moment to close the door behind her. Then, conscious she had no real protection against the rain, she ran towards the body, keeping her head down against the downpour.
This was utterly stupid, she realised now. From inside, it hadn’t been clear quite how intense the rainstorm really was. Just in the space of a few yards, she was soaked almost to the skin. But there was little point in turning back. She stepped off the tiled pool surround and approached the figure.
There was no doubt that it was Peter Hardy – and from closer up and with the aid of the spotlights, it was equally clear that he was no longer the threat that Michelle Wentworth had feared. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring blankly into the darkness. Except for his feet, his body lay largely outside the intense pool of light the spotlights cast. Even so, Zoe could see the pool of blood seeping into the grass beneath Hardy’s head. She couldn’t be sure from this angle, but her guess was that he’d beaten savagely about the head in the same way as the previous three victims.
She was soaked to the skin now. The only saving grace was that, although the temperature had dropped with the arrival of the rain, it was still a relatively warm evening. She crouched down by Hardy’s body and took one of his wrists, searching for a pulse, although she had little doubt that he was dead.
