The Clutter Corpse

by Simon Brett

  ‘What, so you’ll go and see it before you meet Tracey for lunch?’

  My son blushed. ‘Actually, we’re going to meet at the museum. She’s interested in that stuff too.’

  This suggestion that the two of them knew each other quite well was, of course, exactly what a mother wanted to hear. It was wonderful to see Ben so positive.

  ‘Well, have a great time.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, as he moved to the front door.

  ‘And …’

  ‘I’m fine, Ma.’

  Not sure when I would eat next, I made myself a mushroom omelette. I was just about to start on it when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello. It’s Bruce Tallis.’

  ‘Ah. I do want to say how sorry I am for your loss. I don’t know how—’

  ‘All right, don’t bother with all that. I know what you mean.’ He moved brusquely on. ‘I hear from the police you were the person who actually found her … Kerry’s …’ Somehow he couldn’t say the word ‘body’ or ‘corpse’.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I said, trying to ease the awkwardness.

  ‘They told me it was coincidence, that it happened to be you, someone who’d met Kerry before.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Was it really?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course it was. Are you suggesting I had anything to do with her death?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he backtracked quickly. ‘It’s just that … I’m desperate to find out anything about her … her last days. Who she was hanging out with, how she came to end up in that flat … anything, really.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’d seen nothing of your daughter between the end of our … business dealings …’ The memory still brought an unpleasant taste to my mouth ‘… and when I discovered her body.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’ His voice took on an almost pathetic, pleading tone. ‘But do you know anyone else who saw her, you know, during the last months?’

  Of course, there was Les. Les, who’d spent time with ‘Celeste’ when they’d both crashed back into using after meeting at ReProgramme. But I wasn’t about to land Les with his girlfriend’s grieving father. Not until I’d checked it was OK with him, anyway.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anyone.’

  ‘Listen, Ellen, I feel rather bad about you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The way I treated you way back.’ He wasn’t finding this easy. His previous career hadn’t trained him in the skills of pleading and apologizing. ‘I believed Kerry when she said you’d helped yourself to the proceeds from the stuff that my wife … you know what I mean.’

  I did, but I saw no reason to make things easy for him.

  He continued, more awkwardly than ever. ‘The fact is, I now think Kerry may have taken the money herself.’

  I still said nothing.

  ‘So … I’ll pay you what was on your invoice. Double what was on your invoice.’ For men like Bruce Tallis, the solution to every problem was the application of more money.

  But no amount of money could bring his daughter back to life. I thanked him formally for the offer of settlement. Then, after a silence, he said, ‘I’d really like to meet up and talk about Kerry.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a very long conversation,’ I said. ‘I hardly knew her, and you know the circumstances of our meeting.’

  ‘Please.’ His mouth had difficulty in shaping the unfamiliar word.

  I thought about it. Here was me trying to find out the circumstances of Kerry Tallis’s death, and here was her father, who had known her right through her life, offering the opportunity to talk about her. It was a no-brainer. I agreed to talk to him. Queenie and Ashleigh would once again be elbowed by a stronger priority.

  I gave him my address and he said he’d drive straight down from Lorimers.

  I was surprised that Les answered on the third ring.

  He sounded disappointed when I identified myself. ‘Oh, I thought it might be Dodge. He said he was going to ring this morning.’

  I thought that was promising news – it suggested that Les might be rehabilitated into the ReProgramme community – but I made no comment. Instead I just told him about my recent conversation and Bruce Tallis’s eagerness to talk to anyone who’d had recent contact with his daughter.

  Les sounded dubious. ‘I don’t know. I’ve done my bit with the police, answered all their questions about Celeste, and finally got them off my back. Last thing I want to do is stir things up again.’

  ‘I can see that. Well, fine. I won’t put Bruce in touch with you.’

  ‘Right.’ He havered for a moment. ‘Mind you, there are things I’d like to ask him about her. My relationship with Celeste was never going anywhere, relationships between people like us never do go anywhere, but I did care for her, you know.’

  ‘I could easily give Bruce Tallis your number.’

  ‘Mm.’ He didn’t sound keen. ‘What’s he look like, this Bruce Tallis?’

  ‘Late fifties, early sixties, I suppose. Why’re you asking?’

  ‘Just, living the life I lead, you get very careful about people who’re interested in meeting you. Never know who they are. Could be undercover cops, heavies come to get you for some drug deal that went wrong. You get a bit paranoid, you know. I’m not going to set up a meeting with someone who might be about to do me in.’

  ‘Bruce Tallis only wants to talk to you about his daughter.’

  ‘Oh yes? And suppose he’s got it into his head that, because I was one of the last people to spend time with her, I was the one who topped her?’

  ‘Now you are being paranoid.’

  ‘Yeah? With reason. You’d understand that, if you’d lived through some of the things I have.’

  I sighed. ‘All right then. I won’t give Bruce your number. But if you do want to know what he looks like, check out whether you do know him, I’m sure there are images online. He’s quite a well-known figure in the business world.’ I gave Les the details of Bruce Tallis’s company.

  ‘I might have a look,’ he said. But not in the manner of someone who was about to do anything.

  TWENTY

  As I ended the call, I saw through the front window a Jaguar SUV drawing up in front. Bruce Tallis was in the passenger seat, dressed in a suit and tie, perhaps on the way to the office, and driven by his butler/factotum Ramiro. It struck me this was the perfect opportunity to take a photograph I could send to Les. If he didn’t recognize Bruce as a potential danger, then perhaps he might be prepared to talk to him.

  I took the photo through the window and opened the front door. I invited Ramiro to come in, but Bruce said he would stay in the car. The Portuguese did not raise any objection, giving the impression that he was well used to waiting around at his employer’s pleasure. There didn’t seem to be much warmth between the two men, but then this was the first time I’d seen them together, so perhaps it reflected a permanent state of affairs.

  ‘Ramiro will not be with me much longer,’ Bruce volunteered as he came into the house. ‘He is going back to Albufeira to open a restaurant. I cannot think he will make a success of it. He’s a lazy bastard, doesn’t understand the meaning of hard work.’

  I remembered hearing Constancia’s similar view, that if their restaurant ever did get opened, it was she who would end up doing everything.

  ‘Anyway, first thing I must do …’ Bruce reached into his inside pocket and produced an envelope. ‘What I owe you,’ he said brusquely. ‘Doubled up.’ Money once again solving everything?

  He did not react to my thanks and refused the offer of coffee or tea. He said, ‘I’m just here because I want to talk about Kerry. Her mother – you know, my first wife – won’t have anything to do with me. And my second wife …’ Once again, he avoided using her name.

  ‘Jeanette,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Yes. Well, she never really knew Kerry, so … there are very few people I can talk to about her. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

  His
reasoning seemed slightly odd, but I suppose one doesn’t expect too much logic from someone who’s just suffered a devastating bereavement. So, with the warning that I probably couldn’t provide much new information, I said he could ask any questions he wished to. I’d made myself a coffee and we sat in the sitting room.

  ‘Needless to say,’ he began, ‘I’ve had a lot of interviews with the police since … since, er …’

  ‘Detective Inspector Prendergast?’

  ‘Him and others, yes. They’re still very curious about why you ended up in that flat, you know, where you found Kerry …’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Yes. I think Prendergast’s probably going to want to talk to you a lot more.’

  ‘He implied as much to me.’

  ‘I just thought you should know that, you know, from what he said to me.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be ready for him.’

  ‘I wonder, Ellen, if you could go through, for me, the precise circumstances of how you found my daughter … my daughter’s …’

  I had no wish to repeat the narrative yet again, but I reasoned that his bereavement deserved that much effort from me, however unwelcome. As we talked, he gave me insights into where Kerry had gone wrong in life. He laid much of the blame on her mother, ignoring his own long absences and lack of parental input. He didn’t know exactly when Kerry had started using heroin, but he thought it was in her late teens. And he issued wild threats about what he would do if he ever tracked down the people who had introduced her to the drug and continued to supply it to her.

  For a long time he hadn’t realized, as his beloved daughter asked for ever greater increases in her allowance, what she was spending the money on. When he did, he cut back sharply on the subsidies. But rather than breaking her habit, that had only made her turn to crime to fund it.

  ‘Crime like taking the money for the returns on Jeanette’s purchases?’ I suggested. ‘And blaming it on me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said unwillingly.

  ‘And stealing from your golf club friends?’

  That really shocked him. ‘How did you hear about that?’

  No way I was going to involve Dodge, so I just said, ‘One hears things.’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, don’t mention it to anyone else!’ His membership of the West Sussex seemed more important to him than his recent tragedy.

  He asked me more questions about my discovery of Kerry’s corpse. He was so insistent, constantly going over the same ground, how I came to be in Portsmouth and so on, that for a while I wondered whether he suspected me of being responsible for his daughter’s death.

  But, as our conversation drew to a close, that impression was replaced by another one. Bruce Tallis did not suspect me of murder; he was just trying to find out how much I knew. Whether I had any information that might lead to identifying the real perpetrator.

  A cynic, who suspected Bruce Tallis’s guilt in the case, might have thought that he was checking whether he had covered his tracks adequately.

  After he’d left, I texted the photograph I had taken of Bruce Tallis to Les. I had this nice fantasy that he’d get back to me straight away, saying whether or not he recognized the man. But he didn’t reply and, as I told myself discouragingly, there was no reason why he ever should.

  I tried to appease my conscience by visiting Queenie and Ashleigh, but again my concentration was bad. I did at least ensure that Queenie ate another Hobnob, but I hadn’t got the energy to be proactive on Ashleigh’s case. And, increasingly, if she was going to keep her flat and keep Zak out of care, she needed someone to be proactive.

  So, I got back home in a state of dissatisfaction. I tried to do more housework, but that didn’t engage me. My mind was too full of Kerry Tallis.

  Could it really be that Bruce had killed his own daughter? What was that line Oliver was always quoting to me? Oscar Wilde, I think. ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves.’ Surely it wasn’t possible.

  I settled down to organize my recent SpaceWoman invoices into a form in which they could be sent to my accountant for the tax return. That was almost as mindless as housework, but it didn’t stop my thoughts from straying as much as I would have wished.

  I’d had a text from Ben late afternoon to say when he’d be back. He’s good like that, particularly after he’s had one of his ‘incidents’. I contemplated the further displacement activity of cooking a lavish dinner for him. I can get quite pleasantly involved in cooking when the mood takes me. But then I recalled that I didn’t know what scale of lunch he’d have had in London with Tracey. Better wait till he came home and see how hungry he was.

  I tried the television, but the daytime schedule is such mindless dross that it didn’t engage me. And I knew I hadn’t got the concentration to embark on some meaty drama from Netflix. I poured myself a glass of Merlot at five o’clock, much earlier than I normally would have done, then went and had a long bath with a second one.

  As he had promised, Ben arrived back soon after seven and I could tell as soon as he came through the door that the day had been a good one. He and Tracey had got on. When I asked about his lunch, I was glad I hadn’t gone to the effort of cooking something elaborate for the evening. He said they hadn’t left the restaurant until after four. Which I thought was very good news.

  I didn’t ask him anything about Tracey. I didn’t want to be a mother in the Fleur Bonnier mould, eager to squeeze out every last detail about her child’s sex life (though in her case to demonstrate how inadequate it was as compared to her own). But the few details Ben did let slip warmed my maternal heart.

  I wondered whether Tracey had had anything to do with his recent low mood. He had always found sustaining relationships difficult and, at his lowest, was as sensitive as if he’d had layers of skin removed. But, anyway, if there had been a problem between them, the day seemed to have resolved it.

  ‘One interesting thing Tracey did, Ma …’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I tried not to sound too pathetically interested in any information he was volunteering about her.

  ‘You remember you were talking about that guy Liam Burgess … the one who’s been working with Hilary …?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Well, as you know, Tracey’s not at Nottingham Trent, she’s at the University of Nottingham.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doing a BA in criminology. And you said Liam was doing a postgraduate degree in the same subject.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Well, she’d never met him.’

  ‘Is that strange? I mean, I’ve no idea exactly how many students there might be doing criminology in—’

  ‘Tracey checked on her laptop while we were having lunch. She obviously has access to all the university records.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yes. And the interesting thing she found out was—’

  ‘Stop being overdramatic, Ben. Tell me.’

  ‘There’s nobody called Liam Burgess registered at the University of Nottingham. Undergraduate or postgraduate.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  I didn’t sleep so well that night. No choking dreams, just restless. I woke at 2.43. Isn’t it annoying how precise digital clocks have made us? When I was younger, I could wake ‘round quarter to three’. Not any more. As soon as I wake, the LED numbers are imprinted on my brain.

  That night, with consciousness came a bleak feeling of missing Oliver. It still happens distressingly often. I suppose that’s something that’ll be with me for the rest of my life.

  I tried to replace thoughts of him with work issues. During the previous week – amazing, it was still less than a week – I’d had to postpone some bookings. First thing in the morning I must reschedule them. And chase the invoices which my brief investigations of the day before had revealed to be unpaid.

  I did go back to sleep eventually. And then woke round the time I normally do: 6.37. Precise again. Friday morning.

  Ben and I had had a very pleasant evening together, but he hadn�
��t said what his plans were. Though he’d clearly enjoyed his time with Tracey, I was still worried about him. Didn’t want him to be alone all day. And I couldn’t call on Dodge again so soon. Whereas I might have made my necessary SpaceWoman phone calls from the Yeti on my rounds, I decided to do them from home until I’d found out what Ben was intending to do.

  But plans were abruptly changed by my phone ringing soon after seven. Philip Boredean.

  ‘Can you come over here, Ellen?’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Hilary. She’s disappeared.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I came down yesterday late afternoon. There was no sign of her. I haven’t slept all night, thinking where she might be.’

  ‘I’m sure she can’t have gone far. I saw her only a couple of days ago. She came over here. She was fine.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think she’s fine now.’

  I was worried. Philip’s not the kind of man to get hysterical. He’s very even-tempered – almost, I’ve realized over the years, to the point of being dull. That was why I was so glad I’d not ended up with him. Life with Oliver had been a roller-coaster, at times very scary, but it had never been dull.

  But for Philip to ring, in the kind of state he clearly was, worried me.

  ‘Do you know something? There was no note, was there? Are you afraid she’s been kidnapped or …?’

  ‘No, not that. I’m afraid … I’m afraid …’

  ‘What are you afraid of, Philip?’

  There was a silence. Then he said, ‘Liam’s disappeared too.’

  ‘Yes. Hilary said there was no sign of him when she left the house on Wednesday.’

  ‘But I’ve looked in the room he was sleeping in. He left his laptop. I’m sure there’s stuff on it that … I couldn’t access it, but …’

  I repeated, ‘What are you afraid of, Philip?’

  The answer, when it came, was like a cry of anguish. ‘I’m afraid Hilary’s gone off with Liam.’

  And I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did about my friends’ marriage.