Homicide in Herne Hill

by Alice Castle

  Immediately, all Harry’s warnings from the night before came back to Beth. She hated the thought of Nina stumbling into something that would get her into trouble. ‘It might not be safe. He can be quite… threatening, Potter, don’t you find?’

  ‘Paul? Nah! He’s a big softy. Maybe it’s his size you don’t like,’ said Nina shrewdly. ‘When you stand face-to-face, it can feel a bit as though you’re talking to a mountain. I try and be standing while he’s sitting, and sitting while he’s standing,’ said Nina, nodding sagely.

  Beth, not sure she could remember this complicated ballet while also on red alert for funny business and carrying out all the normal office functions as well, was non-committal. ‘Hm. Well, I’ll certainly bear that in mind.’

  Nina burst out laughing. ‘Well, if that isn’t shorthand for not on your life, I don’t know what is. Anyway, I won’t hold you up. I really need a coffee. Get to it, girl!’

  ‘Sorry, I’ll let you get on. See you this afternoon. And let me know if anything kicks off here again with the dog situation.’

  ‘Oh, it should be all quiet, don’t you worry. Ben will be just fine. Unless another dog gets done in, of course.’ With that, Nina shut the door.

  Beth could almost see her stumbling over Wilf’s detritus to the coffee maker, like a drowning woman reaching for a lifebelt. She hoped she’d be all right, in charge of two energetic boys all day when she’d clearly been sleep deprived. But Beth knew from experience that a pair of children was often a lot easier to handle than one. They entertained each other, reducing the burden on the grown-up in a rather magical way. She hoped things would pan out like that for Nina.

  As she carried on down the road to the office, Beth noticed this morning’s hard frost was already disappearing, leaving the gutters awash with water and the pavements slick. She admired the colours teased from the humble paving slabs when they were wet like this, hues of violet and gentle taupe standing out amongst the standard London grey. There was so much to love about the place. That didn’t stop her slowing a little as she approached the frosted glass of the office. She wasn’t mad keen to go inside. But at least she’d be on her own for a bit. Potter never came in this early.

  The longer she’d worked here, the less she’d liked this place, she had to admit. Why it was, she didn’t quite know. There was nothing, in the bland, rather aseptic décor, to inspire dread. But she definitely felt a sense of unease as she let herself in and switched on the neon lights. Perhaps it was these, taking a moment to fizz into action, and then throwing a forensic pall of harsh, ugly light over the interior, which made it such an unfriendly workspace.

  She hung her coat over the back of her chair, unwound the scarf from her neck and slung her bag on the counter. She was finally going to get into Potter’s filing cabinets and see what on earth was going on. She’d be able to do a thorough search before he was anywhere near. It wasn’t even worth sitting down in her chair. She just needed to march in there, unlock the door with the key from the cup cupboard, get down the filing cabinet key once she was in his office, and then bingo, she’d be there at last. On the case, doing a proper search, a thorough investigation that was bound to reveal what on earth was so strange about this place. She pressed her hands together, then gripped them into tight fists, willing herself into action.

  But it was no good. For some reason, she just didn’t want to get on with it. Had she finally found a quest that she wasn’t willing to plunge into thoughtlessly? Was it Harry’s warnings last night?

  Or was it that she had a very bad feeling about… something. Beth thought hard. She’d gained new respect for her instincts over the past few months. In fact, that last time she’d ignored their jangling warnings, she’d had a sizeable clonk over the head and woken up in hospital. She pressed a hand to the side of her skull. There was nothing to show for it there now, but she remembered all too well the horror of those moments before she’d lost consciousness. She’d realised then, that by putting herself in the path of trouble, she’d risked making Ben an orphan.

  Things were different now, though, weren’t they? She had Harry. But no, what was she thinking of? If she were off the scene, he could hardly take over. He had no legal status, and she wasn’t entirely sure what other right he had to become a quasi-parent to her son. They weren’t even officially going out yet. They’d never so much as strolled into Jane’s café together, let alone given Dulwich any other indication that things might be serious. No, all Harry would be, at this point, was another mourner at her graveside. While that might be nice for Ben, it was not going to get him through life. There was nothing for it. She had to be a bit more careful.

  Beth hated to wimp out, she really did. But the confrontation she’d had with Potter, right here in this little space in the kitchen, had been very unpleasant, and that had been a situation she’d been able to talk herself out of. If he found her with her head right inside his filing cabinets, there was not much she’d be able to come up with which would justify such blatant snooping.

  She had to admit it. She was just plain scared. So she did what she always did in moments of crisis. She flipped on the kettle, got her usual mug, then decided to pull her chair over while she was at it to get Potter’s key from under his Simpkin cup – and discovered there was nothing there. But she’d put it back there only last night. Flummoxed, she searched the rest of the top cupboard, as best she could. She was at a huge height disadvantage, so it was a case of lifting her arms above her head, moving each cup then feeling under it, as this was all happening well above her eye-line. But after ten fruitless minutes of rooting, she was pretty sure: the cupboard was bare.

  She hopped down from the chair and flexed her arms, sore from being held at such an odd angle for all that time. Where could the blessed man have hidden the key now? She was kicking herself. She ought to have expected as much. After all, he’d found out quite incontrovertibly that she knew where his beloved key was, and for a man so hooked on security, that was always going to be a problem. He’d probably moved it the moment her back was turned.

  She paused only to slosh some boiling water into her mug and stir the bag absently with a spoon. No reason why she shouldn’t have a cup of tea while thinking. She quickly scanned the office. Where else would she hide a key, if she was a ridiculously tall, paranoid solicitor? There weren’t a lot of possibilities. He’d done well with his original Simpkin arrangement and was no doubt furious that he’d been forced to make changes. She let her eyes wander, looking for anything out of place, anything unusual, anything with space for a key… but that was pointless. The key wasn’t exactly large; it could be anywhere.

  She pursed her lips. The filing cabinet key in his room had been on top of the horrible Rothko. There weren’t any posters out here – thank goodness – but there had to be some alternative hidey-holes. She turned on her heels. The frosted glass frontage. The small seating area with its leaflets. Her own small desk. The kitchenette… There was a mug upended on the draining board, which she definitely hadn’t left out last night. She darted to it, turned it over, but there was nothing there unless you counted the high tide of a ring inside. She sniffed, unimpressed by the washing-up skills on display, but her gaze roved on.

  Wait, could the key be in the fridge? She leapt to it, opened the door, but apart from the usual milk, and now a wrinkly apple, it was empty. The ice tray? She scrabbled open the door, but that’s all it was inside – ice. Plenty of it. Enough for a small snowman, which was extraordinary given the matchbox size of the fridge – but definitely no keys. The cleaning cupboard? This was so low down, for Potter, that she would have been amazed if he’d even known it existed, let alone stashed something here. As she thought, there was only a bottle of Cif and a couple of mummified microfibre cloths. The cup cupboard she’d already searched.

  She stared at the door of Potter’s office, with concentrated dislike. The bloody man! Talk about making things difficult. If he wasn’t looming over her, making her feel knee-high to an oompa
loompa, then he was hiding stuff with a fervour that made George Smiley, with all his tradecraft, look like an amateur. It was blooming ridiculous. She wandered over to the door and rattled the knob in frustration. And it turned in her hand.

  Wait, what? she thought. It’s open all along? Aside from the tide of annoyance and frustration, mostly self-directed, that rose up unstoppably as she realised how much time she’d wasted searching for the key, Beth felt a prickle of alarm. Why wasn’t it locked up tight? This wasn’t like Potter. It wasn’t like him at all.

  But even though bells were ringing, she didn’t feel she had a choice. She had to go inside. This could be her last, her very last, opportunity to search the files, after all. Yes, it had to be done. She carried on turning the handle and, softly, softly, opened the door.

  Part of her was thinking, there’s no need to pussyfoot. No-one here to see her or tell her that she was invading Potter’s privacy, virtually breaking and entering. And she should get on with it all, as fast as she could. But despite that, she moved slowly, opening the door a centimetre at a time.

  Later, she couldn’t have said what she was expecting. Did she think someone would rush out at her? Or that the street door bell, silent for so much of the time, would finally burst into life and she would be caught out? Or maybe it was a more primeval sense that something, somewhere, was very far from being right, and she was about to find out what it was.

  Whatever the reason, Beth was almost moving in slow motion as she finally twisted the door open and then pushed, advancing as though her feet were mired in treacle. She kept hearing Potter’s voice in her head, barking at her to shut the door, go back to her work, get on with her last report and stop wasting time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  But when the door finally swung open, she realised she’d never be hearing from Potter again. His office was cold, still, calm, and had a curiously uninhabited air, all the more surprising as its owner was sprawled, unmoving, across the big blond desk.

  Beth had a moment of cold horror, not just for Potter, but also for herself. She really, really, didn’t want to discover another body. She put a hand up to the door frame and steadied herself as best she could. If she set foot in the office, then she’d have no choice but to put all those wheels in motion – again. If she just hovered here, maybe even shut the door, finished that cup of tea and then went home to Ben… maybe, just maybe, all this would simply go away.

  But then she realised. He might still be alive. She darted forward, and time finally seemed to be moving forward again, after the slow motion of the last few minutes. She looked at the inert form. He was bent right across the shiny surface, head resting on the unusually cluttered desk, face first. All she could really see of him was a lot of hair, thinning slightly at the crown now she was being forced to study it, and with a curiously vulnerable-looking strip of skin at the back of his neck. It wasn’t as darkly tanned as the hands splayed out on the desk, or the face, mercifully hidden. Was he dead?

  She had a dilemma. She knew (who better?) that she shouldn’t touch anything. But maybe he’d just passed out? Beth reached a tentative finger towards his neck and saw that her hand was shaking wildly. She tried to still it, but to no avail. She put her other hand up to steady it. At last she got herself under control enough to touch the inert form, very quickly. He was cold. Very, very cold.

  She took a breath and turned her attention to the mess strewn across the desk. Right in front of her was a cup with some liquid in it. There were pills all around it, a bottle of rum with a sticky centimetre left, and a couple of medicine bottles – one lying on its side, label uppermost. Zimovane, she read. Where had she heard that before? Or something like it? The memory slotted into place. The chemist. Then she saw, with a thrill of horror, that the mug was the ‘Dad’ one made by his children. The uneven red lettering seemed to shout at her. How could he have chosen this cup, so lovingly if ineptly made?

  But there were more urgent considerations. She had to call the police and report this horrible find. Poor, poor Potter. She hadn’t been his biggest fan, true, but this? It was too grim.

  She was dialling the third nine on her phone when she suddenly realised the world of trouble she was going to be in. Harry was sure to get wind of the situation. Much though she’d love this to be handled by some sweet but bumbling bobby on the beat, she knew the Met would call in the big guns straight away, and round here that meant Harry. He’d come down on her like a ton of bricks. Two tons, most likely. It would be worse than Potter at his most threatening. She’d concealed from Harry the fact that she was working here, and why, and he was going to be deeply unamused to find out when, yet again, her involvement in a situation led to the removal of a body bag.

  But, thought Beth, it wasn’t her fault. Who’d have thought that Potter would do something like this? He hadn’t struck her as the type to carry out such a desperate act. True, he’d seemed preoccupied and worried of late – but if everyone in Dulwich who was a bit distrait was at risk, then they’d have to section every single person in SE21.

  Besides, she had no choice but to ring. Potter had a family, and they needed to be informed. Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of his children. She didn’t know them well, only as beautiful blonde creatures that were in the same playground as Ben, but seemed to inhabit a slightly different world – one that didn’t involve mud, scraped knees, or any other messy side effects of being small.

  And Letty! What was this going to do to a woman so ethereal that it was already a surprise that she walked on solid ground like the rest of them? At least she’d look amazing in black, thought Beth, then immediately chided herself and wondered how such a thing could have popped into her head at such a time. She completed the call, asking for police and an ambulance, though she knew it was too late, and stood there quivering gently for a minute. Gradually, she got herself back under control, reminded herself to breathe, then she backed away, closed Potter’s door, and sat down in a heap at her desk.

  But there was something she just had to do, no matter how dire the circumstances. When she’d arrived this morning, she’d had one last day to accomplish her task. Now, thanks to Potter, she probably only had a few minutes. But she was damned if she’d let them slip away, laying waste to all the time she’d put in for Nina. Her friend had been sure that something was badly wrong here, and it looked as though she’d been spot on. But they were still no nearer to finding the cause.

  There was only one way to do that.

  Beth put her hands flat against the desk and pushed herself up. She really didn’t want to do this, but she had no choice. She’d have to go back into Potter’s room. Yes, he was lying there dead. Yes, it was distasteful in the extreme, and would probably give her nightmares for ever, but it had to be done. She’d just have to think of him, not just as a recent corpse, but as – and here she really struggled to think of something that would get her back into the room in close proximity to a dead body – erm, a collection of chops. Dead meat. That’s what they said, didn’t they, in those lurid bestsellers like the ones in Nina’s desk? Yes, it would be just like passing a butcher’s shop window, and she’d done that often enough, hadn’t she? What about those places in Chinatown, with grotesquely stretched ducks hanging from hooks? They were even pretty much the same laminated brick-red colour as Potter.

  At this point, Beth’s rapidly-consumed early breakfast threatened to make a reappearance and she decided to drop the whole meat metaphor. It really wasn’t working and, for the first time in her life, vegetarianism was seeming like an extremely tempting option. She’d just go for denial. It had served her well enough in the past for a multiplicity of issues.

  Then, almost as though she were moving in a dream, she moved to the cleaning cupboard and fetched one of the fossilised microfibre cloths. Steeling herself, she opened Potter’s office door again and tried to avert her gaze from the ghastliness on the desk. Practical issues would keep her focused. She reckoned it would be fine to have her fingerpri
nts on the door, and maybe Potter’s desk, as she’d been in and out for all those endless dictation sessions. But she had to keep traces to a minimum.

  The cloth in her hand was stiff and unyielding. She looked down at it crossly, thinking she should really have words with Nina. It had clearly been an age since it had been used to clean anything. But then she realised all that was completely irrelevant now. The office was bound to close. Potter’s empire was finished, crooked or not.

  She crumpled the cloth in her hand as best she could, softening it up enough to be usable. Now for the key. She really didn’t want to mess around dragging chairs in this time when she was up against the clock, so she jumped up and down in front of the Rothko, trying to swipe the hidden key with the edge of the cloth. It was lucky Potter was dead, she thought, otherwise she’d have to die of embarrassment herself, she must look so ridiculous. But just when she was completely out of breath and decided she’d be joining Potter by having a heart attack on the spot, she managed to flick the key with the edge of the cloth and knock it down onto the carpet.

  Grabbing it, again using the cloth, she slotted the little silver key into the lock of the first cabinet and pulled out the top drawer. It shot out surprisingly fast, and when she got up on tiptoe again, she saw why. It was empty. Completely empty. She repeated the process with the other drawers – nine in total – with the same result. Every single one was cavernously, echoingly, rattlingly void.

  She couldn’t believe it. All this time and all that effort, and it had all been for nothing. So much for the secret that she had been sure had been lurking there at the heart of the office. And Nina, too. She had been sure there had been something going on. But, in fact, there’d been a big, fat nothing. It didn’t make sense.