by Ali Knight
‘What kind of messages?’
I opened my phone and showed him the two notes I had found. ‘There were probably others.’
‘Do you have the originals?’
I shook my head. ‘One might still be at the office.’
‘I’m here on the Milo case, but you need to tell the team working on what happened to your dad about these immediately,’ Dwight said. I nodded.
A few moments later Dwight got up and our conversation was over. We left the office and he turned towards the lobby. ‘You don’t want to speak to Helene?’ I asked.
His answer surprised me. ‘I already did. She came down to the station earlier today.’
CHAPTER 58
Helene
Nine days before
Inspector Reed had phoned and asked if he could talk to me again about Milo, and considering my family’s latest tragedy, was happy to come round, but I was so desperate to get out of that cursed house, which whispered of Gabe at every turn, I practically ran to the station.
He was colder towards me than previously, which set my antennae twitching. Something about blues and reds, which made no sense to me, but made me worry they were making out Milo was a drug dealer. I didn’t buy it, but then, what did I know? He asked me whether Milo had ever mentioned a girlfriend or a woman he was seeing to me. I stumbled in my reply, wondering if Alice had been lying to me. Had she been seeing him for longer than she claimed? No, it wasn’t possible. DI Reed noticed my discomfort and I coloured. That made me angry.
‘Seems to me you know next to nothing about his murder after a whole month. Was he killed in a crime of passion or was he a drug dealer? It’s unlikely to be both. You need to work harder, Detective Reed.’
Then it was his turn to flush with anger. He told me there was a third way out of our house via the back fence into a neighbouring road. A secret route, apparently. I scoffed; it was more likely a fence piece broken by the grandchildren from next door and badly patched up to escape a scolding. But I knew who had told the police about it: Maggie. She had used the back alley to spy on my family. The idea that she had been grubbing around on my property, trampling over my boundaries, made me twitchy with anger.
DI Reed’s insinuations didn’t stop there. ‘I understand you’re running GWM,’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ve taken over day-to-day control of the company. It’s not a surprise, it’s how the company was structured. It’s a family enterprise.’
‘A lot to take on, considering what’s happened.’
‘I need to be busy. I’d go mad with anger, otherwise.’ I stood up. This was a waste of time and I had a lot to do.
‘I haven’t finished,’ Dwight said.
‘Yes, you have.’ I turned to the door. ‘I’m in here again because of Maggie Malone’s meddling. That’s not going to happen again. Stop trying to look for things that aren’t there. If you want to talk to me again, call my lawyer.’
I walked out of the room. This had gone far enough. Maggie was raised to relish a fight – well, I fumed, she was going to get one. I took out my phone and made a call.
CHAPTER 59
Maggie
Nine days before
There was discord at the Blue and White. We were all pulling in different directions. Rory and Simone had been taking turns to tail the teenager whose mother was worried she was hanging with the wrong crowd while I had spent long hours out of the office snooping around in Chelsea trying to track down Gabe’s lover. Rory and Simona had more success than me – Rory found out within five hours that our pretty teenage Juliette was smoking dope by a boarded-up electrical shop that backs on to a park. He took pictures of Juliette’s slim young arms around the neck of a skinny man about ten years older than her with a goatee and too many piercings. He had the wasted, twitchy look of a long-time consumer of something illegal and by the fawning way Juliette gazed at him, it wouldn’t be long before she’d do something stupid with a needle to try and get closer to him.
I knew that money couldn’t insulate you from passions that were counterproductive. All that hard work that Juliette’s mother had put in over the years, the money she had spent on private school and summer holiday clubs, and she couldn’t stop her daughter from revelling in the nasty. Soon I would be phoning her mother and confirming her worst fears and relating another sorry tale of love gone wrong.
I told no one that I was sleeping badly. Gabe’s death had left me with a heavy weight of guilt and self-recrimination. Did his fall have anything to do with him seeing me? Had there been someone up in the tower waiting for him that evening, and if so, who? I felt out of sorts and ill at ease.
And worst of all, Gabe’s case had resurrected feelings I had carried with me since I was nineteen, since Colin Torday came into my life. It made me more determined to find out who this woman in Chelsea was, and what had happened to Gabe in Connaught Tower. If I connected Milo and Gabe’s deaths, even better.
I left Rory and Simona to man the office while I spent the long hours outside the home of Gabe’s mystery woman. No one ever answered the door. I roused the few neighbours who occupied surrounding flats; no one could tell me anything about the occupant of number 12 on the middle floor. I showed her photo, they shrugged and closed their doors, I accosted the street cleaner and received only a shake of the head. No lights ever came on on the middle floor.
Finally, after getting variously hot, bored and aching, a guy in his thirties drove up with a surfboard on the roof and got out and approached the building. He was happy to talk. He lived on the ground floor, and hadn’t seen the woman upstairs for ages. Hadn’t heard her, either, when I asked him about that. Instinctively we both looked up at the windows, where the blinds were not lowered.
‘What else can you tell me about her?’ I asked.
‘I never spoke to her,’ he said. His English was impeccable, with a French accent. I guessed him to be a banker who had enjoyed a few days on a Cornish beach.
‘Ever see anyone visit her?’
He shook his head, his surfboard tucked under one arm now, keen to go and get on with his evening.
‘She drove a car.’
‘I don’t suppose you can remember …’
He looked around, disinterested. ‘It’s not here. She drove a Porsche 911, silver, vintage.’
There was one thing you can say about bankers, I thought, they were competitive little fuckers around cars. ‘I don’t suppose you know the registration, do you?’ He gave a Gallic shrug. Of course he didn’t. No one remembered details like that.
‘It was an L reg.’ He walked into his flat.
In the days had been coming to her street I had never seen her car. I looked back at the dark windows. She was no longer here, or something far more unpleasant had happened. I needed to get in there, and fast.
CHAPTER 60
Alice
Nine days before
After Dwight left I stayed late at the office. I watched as everyone else put on their sunglasses and picked up their bags and headed out into the evening sunshine. I was immune to their pleasure, inoculated against the joys of summer. They said their nervous and deferential goodbyes to me and finally I was left alone. It was better here than home. I couldn’t stand being at home then.
When the last person had headed for the exit, I went into Poppa’s office. It was filled with wilting bouquets of flowers no one had dared move and stank of old flower water. I took out his set of keys that had come back to the family in the box of his effects. I unlocked the filing cabinet and began rooting through everything in there, photographing what was important.
I didn’t find the scribbled warning note. Someone, maybe Poppa himself, or Soraya in an act of secretarial loyalty, had destroyed it.
But I found another.
It was a scrawled note in blue biro on a piece of paper, a mock-up of a last will and testament. ‘With my dying breath I offer GWM to Arkady Oblomov for the fair market price prevailing in our western capitalist system. Nastrovya!’ And a s
miling emoji. It was dated nine months previously. There was the faint curve of the base of a sticky wine glass staining the corner of the paper. I imagined Poppa and Arkady in a bar thick with vaping smoke and empty bottles of red. Showman Arkady making a joke, writing out this declaration that Poppa was supposed to sign. I imagined Poppa’s eyes crinkling, throwing back his head and laughing, ordering another round. But I imagined he would have been sober underneath.
But it was serious enough for Poppa to keep it. I wondered how much of a joke it really was. How keen was a man’s need to have what he desires? Stay away, Arkady, I thought, from what Poppa built from nothing.
I spent several hours in Poppa’s office and I didn’t hear Helene arrive.
‘What are you looking for, Alice?’
Her voice made me jump; I dropped the file I was holding. Helene had taken to wearing widow’s weeds – even in the heat of the summer her thin arms were encased in black, her legs covered with dark tights. They made her look stiff and vacant, like photos of that weird wife of President Reagan.
‘I’m looking at all aspects of the GWM business. I have to keep busy.’
‘That’s very commendable. How did you get into the filing cabinet?’
‘I have Poppa’s keys.’
Her eyes slid to the heavy bunch on the desk. For a moment I thought she was going to grab them, but she stood by the door.
‘I think you need to leave.’
I felt my hands clench into little fists.
Poppa and Helene always treated me like a little kid. After what happened with Mr Dewhurst, Helene in particular felt that she was owed. Well, that was a long time ago now, years. That scandal has died and isn’t coming back. We won. And then I wondered why Helene was there late at night at the offices all alone, but before I could ask her, she said something.
‘Did your police interview go OK?’
I nodded.
‘You don’t have to worry about Malone bothering us any more. I’ve taken care of her.’
Her voice was so cold and detached that for the first time I was scared of my stepmother.
CHAPTER 61
Helene
Nine days before
I found Alice snooping around in Gabe’s office that evening. There were several explanations, none of them welcome. The most obvious conclusion was that she hadn’t accepted his death and was desperate to find someone, other than him, to blame. I began to wonder if I was the nearest thing.
Was she going to punish me in some way for hiring Maggie, for doubting Gabe’s love? It’s hard for a daddy’s girl to accept that their parent is less than perfect; that they were a conflicted, oozing mess of pain and compromise and bad decisions. Grief warps people, and this might have thrown her off.
I was worried about that. My family was out of balance. Alice and I were teetering round a gaping Gabe-shaped hole, and one or both of us was in danger of falling in.
Gabe’s death meant a changing relationship between me and Alice was inevitable. While she had accepted me taking over the business, she could just as well change her mind and cause trouble.
I walked into the office. ‘What are you looking for, Alice?’
‘Nothing.’ Her reply was mumbled and she was nervous. She folded closed a large file of papers that were open on Gabe’s desk and put them back in the filing cabinet. The tension of things unsaid tightened around us.
It was time to win her over. I was good at soothing out knotted shoulders, bringing people back to places they would prefer to be. I had done it with men all my life. A little girl wouldn’t be so difficult. Her grief had knocked her off her feet and sent her scurrying into this office to hunt for a why and a who. It was time to put an end to these blossoming conspiracy theories.
‘Why don’t you come home with me? We can get some food. You don’t want to be in this office all by yourself.’ She didn’t budge. Her little chin jutted forward, her righteousness and stubbornness coming out. She looked so like Gabe at that moment it took my breath away, tipped me closer to the edge of the hole. ‘You’re not going to find any answers to his death in that filing cabinet. Now is the time to pull together as a family, not apart.’
‘This was Poppa’s office. It’s not yours. It should be mine.’ She slammed the filing cabinet closed so hard it shrieked on its rails.
It was so like Alice to think like this, to stamp her feet and shout to try and get what she wanted.
My voice was soft, I knew I needed to remain calm and I passed the test. She was too immature to remember how her father and I helped her over the first big emotional crisis of her teenage years. Some notes were discovered from Alice’s teacher Mr Dewhurst to her. Love notes. She had written others back to him. She was being groomed. She was fourteen years old. Gabe was incandescent, he wanted to flatten the man. I had to physically hold him back from racing out the door and accelerating the car through that dirty old pervert’s front room. I urged him to let the authorities deal with it. I called the police, they contacted the school and they took it from there. I felt sorry for Gabe, so sorry. He blamed himself, he felt he had failed, that his primary job had been to protect her, and she had ended up walking into the clutches of an unscrupulous man who had abused his position of trust. I suppose the outcome was a triumph. Dewhurst lost his job, would never get a reference or work with young people again. We tried to keep the disruption to Alice to a minimum and we succeeded. She didn’t even have to change schools.
I was worried then about how she would react, but she was brilliant. She has a limitless capacity to see the positive in even the worst situations.
My heart softened towards this damaged little creature. ‘One day, Alice, I have no doubt that GMW will be yours. When you’re a little older.’
She pouted at me, but said nothing. The knocks that life had given her had made her strong. She would outlive me, I thought.
CHAPTER 62
Maggie
Eight days before
It was Rory who finally came up trumps on the Chelsea flat. He had made a succession of calls to local estate agents and found out that a flat in the Queen’s Gate development had just come on the rental market. It was the middle floor of number 12.
Presumably Jezza from Foxtons hadn’t encountered a dead body when he’d got hold of the keys and when I spoke to him, keen to live in Queen’s Gate for its quiet location, he hurried me along, boasting that the flat would be gone that day. In London’s overheated rental hell zone, I had no reason to disbelieve him. I told him I’d meet him in an hour.
Jezza was in a hurry, but so was I. He had left his liveried mini running when I turned up at the flat, in case he needed to rev away up the street if I didn’t show. He stepped out of the car and aggressively shook my hand and we were inside the corridor moments later.
‘This is the first day this place has been on the market. I have more viewings later. It’s a great opportunity,’ Jezza said, full of conviction. ‘It’s a very international clientele in this part of Chelsea.’ He smiled; he had bleached his teeth. They made his eyes look cold and his brain look small. He was eyeing me up, checking my watch and the quality of my shoes. He didn’t have time for time-wasters, any more than anyone else did. ‘There’s a direct route into the City obviously, great connections,’ he continued.
I once caught out an estate agent with his lover. They would fuck in empty houses that he would later show to clients. I wondered if Jezza was going to bring his girlfriend here. I looked around the poorly cleaned kitchen. I doubted it. The place was a passion killer.
‘Do you know when the last tenant left?’
‘Just last week.’
I opened a kitchen cabinet, saw a couple of mismatched glasses and an espresso cup. Other cupboards were clean and empty. I glanced into a small living room and headed into the bedroom.
The double bed was stripped, faint stains of old passion blooming on the mattress. A chest of drawers occupied a corner, its drawers standing open. I walked over and glanced i
nside, but they had been cleared. Jezza’s phone rang and he moved back into the kitchen to take it. I bent down and peered quickly under the bed, but there was nothing there except a couple of fluttering clothes moths feasting on the carpet and balls of dust, but something caught my eye under the chest of drawers. A moment later an empty packet of prescription pills was in my hand. I pushed it into my pocket and opened the door to the cramped en-suite bathroom. The cabinet above the sink was empty but in the pedal bin was a used bottle of hair dye and the packaging. Whoever had lived here was now Conker by L’Oréal.
‘Who’s the landlord?’ I asked Jezza who, call finished, had come back into the room and was ready to lead me to the exit.
‘We manage the flat for the property company, so there’s no need for you to worry—’
‘I’m very interested in the flat. I’d like to know who the landlord is.’
Jezza sensed a deal being close to closing, and he did what all good salesmen do, he gave me what I wanted to hear. ‘They are very good landlords.’ He smiled his bleachy-toothed smile as he opened the flat door.
‘But what are they called, Jezza?’
‘Mount Southern Holdings. Shall I have a contract drawn up and emailed over to you?’
‘I have to see one other place,’ I said as we reached the street. Jezza’s face fell a fraction. He had been in the business long enough to know I wasn’t a sure thing. We shook hands in double-quick time and a minute later Jezza roared away at speed from the cul-de-sac, off to hunt for more lucrative options.
When he’d gone I pulled out the pill packet. There was a name printed on the label – Miss L Warriner – and the address of a pharmacy in Peckham, south-east London. I stared back at her flat, thinking about Jezza’s sell. There’s a direct route into the City obviously, great connections.
I was thinking about connections, all over London, millions of individual journeys taken every day, yet the least travelled route? Chelsea to the Old Kent Road, the Old Kent Road to Chelsea. Here was a woman with an SW1 address, supposedly the lover of a rich and glamorous man, who until recently had probably been living in Peckham, and dyed her hair with cheap dye from a high street chemist.
