Careless Love

by Robinson, Peter

  Banks glanced at Gerry to see how she was doing. She gave him a nod, which let him know she was keeping up fine. And no doubt understanding it. ‘Go on,’ he said to Mia.

  ‘Randall and Hadfield came up with the idea of a sort of girlfriend-swapping scenario. But first they wanted to watch the girls frolic by themselves for a while, just to get their juices going, you might say. Adrienne rang me when Hadfield was putting pressure on her to get involved with this foursome scheme, and it made her nervous.’

  ‘And your role was?’

  Mia looked away. ‘I’m ashamed to say that I talked her into it. I’m not proud of myself, but Adrienne lacked confidence. She was a true natural beauty, but it was a hard job talking her into having a sugar daddy in the first place. It was the money that did it, really. The poor kid was broke and she wanted to finish her studies. She also wanted to go off to Africa or somewhere and see wildlife, help the starving people. Adrienne was a humanitarian. She felt she was sacrificing something, her innocence, whatever, for her ideals. I grasped that when I first tried to persuade her to try the life, and I thought if I had succeeded there, I could succeed with this other thing. All she needed was a gentle nudge in the right direction. After all, what did it amount to? A roll in the hay with Sarah wouldn’t have been so bad, then she just had to fuck Randall. Well, I could think of many better things, like having a root canal, but there you go. And there was a nice bonus in it for everyone. But Adrienne was already feeling bad about what she was doing. You know, being Hadfield’s sugar baby. Just how bad I didn’t quite realise. She just . . . It wasn’t her . . . Nobody forced her. She forced herself, and it damaged her.’ Mia shook her head. ‘I should have seen that coming, done something about it. Do you know, I think she died of shame.’

  ‘Did you have feelings for Adrienne, Mia?’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Be honest. We’re not here to judge you.’

  Mia was silent for a while, chewing on her lower lip. Finally, she nodded. ‘I liked her, yes. Maybe more. But it couldn’t be more. I can’t have feelings for the girls I recruit. Or the men. I’m bi, but Adrienne wasn’t. Looking back, I shouldn’t have tried to persuade her. I should have just told her to forget the whole thing. In fact, I shouldn’t even have convinced her to go with Hadfield in the first place.’

  ‘Easy to say with twenty-twenty hindsight.’

  ‘Well, given what happened . . . I mean . . . I just told her to take a couple of pills to relax, you know, like when you go to the dentist’s sometimes.’

  ‘What pills?’

  ‘I gave her two Valium. I have them on prescription.’

  ‘From Randall?’

  ‘God, no. I wouldn’t go to him for an ingrown toenail. Besides, like I said, he’s not a GP.’

  ‘Just two Valium?’

  ‘Yes. I honestly don’t do drugs. Nor do my girls, at least not if I can help it. I try to be very careful about that. Sometimes, though, with the kind of thing they were planning, you just need something to take you out of yourself.’

  ‘What did she do with them?’

  ‘Took them, I suppose. The next time I saw her she was dead. But it can’t have been because of two Valium.’

  ‘Back up a bit, Mia.’

  Mia sniffled, and Banks passed her a tissue. ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘Behaving like a silly little girl.’

  ‘It’s OK. Take your time.’

  ‘I persuaded her to go through with it. That’s all there is to it. I persuaded her, and she ended up dead. I also gave Sarah Adrienne’s number so they could talk it through and feel more comfortable together. Like I said, Sarah was so much more confident than Adrienne. It was all set to take place at Laurence Hadfield’s house on that Saturday night.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t know the exact time. Evening.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘I got a call from Hadfield at about nine. He said something had gone terribly wrong and I had to get over to his place right away. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, not even over the burner. Naturally, I was worried something had happened to Adrienne or Sarah, so I headed out there.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘Randall and Sarah were there with Hadfield. I didn’t see Adrienne. Sarah was in hysterics, saying we had to call the police and an ambulance, and Randall and Hadfield were telling her not to be a fool, it was too late for that. I asked what had happened, and Hadfield told me Adrienne had taken some of his pills from the bathroom cabinet and must have had a bad reaction. Mandrax. He has trouble sleeping and he gets them from a doctor he knows in Cape Town. Adrienne also had a bottle of whisky with her. She never usually drank much. She was probably trying to psych herself up for the show.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘Upstairs. In the big bathroom. Apparently, she’d been there a long time, too long, and both Randall and Hadfield were getting impatient, so they sent Sarah up to talk to her. It was Sarah who found her body. Hadfield told me Adrienne had been edgy all evening and had even told him she wasn’t sure she could go through with it.’

  ‘Are you sure he didn’t offer her the pills and booze to make her comply, the way you offered her Valium?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure. I wasn’t there earlier. But what does it matter? They’re both dead. All I knew was that she’d taken them.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I tried to calm Sarah down, but I couldn’t. There was no way. She was in a hell of state. In the end, Randall took her out to the car and they drove off. I’m sure her carrying on must have sent him over the edge, and he killed her, but I can’t prove it. I wish I could.’

  In all likelihood, Mia was right, Banks thought. When they got to the bothy off the country lane, Randall had had enough of Sarah’s hysterics and threats of calling the police, so he let her out of the car. She ran off, he went after her, then they argued some more and he killed her. Annie had mentioned seeing evidence of his quick temper in her and Gerry’s first interview with him.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Banks said. ‘We’ll make sure Randall pays for what he did. He’s got more than the Medical Ethics Committee to deal with now. Why didn’t he try to help Adrienne? He is a doctor, after all.’

  ‘He did,’ Mia said. ‘Before I got there. He said he’d been up and checked, but he was positive she was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.’

  ‘So what was your role?’

  ‘Cleaner-upper, basically. Someone had to take charge. They were all in shock. After Randall and Sarah had gone, I got Laurence to sit down with a glass of whisky and went up to the bathroom.’ Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. She put her hand to her chest.

  ‘All right?’ Banks said. Mia nodded. ‘Take a few deep breaths. Can you go on, or do you want me to fetch the doctor?’

  Mia took some deep breaths then nodded again. ‘No. I’m OK. It was just so awful.’

  ‘Can you tell us what you found in the bathroom?’

  ‘Adrienne was lying in a bath full of water. It was lukewarm by then. There was a bottle smashed on the floor and a smell of whisky. God, I hate the smell of whisky.’

  Banks remembered Keane and the Laphroaig. ‘I can understand that,’ he said.

  ‘It was clear even to me that Adrienne was dead. Her skin was almost white, her eyes were open. I took a shaving mirror from the washstand and held it to her lips. Nothing. There was a little trickle of vomit from the corner of her mouth, down to her chest.’

  ‘What did you do next?’

  ‘I went back down to Laurence and asked him what he wanted to do. He said we had to move her, get her out of his house. He seemed fairly calm about it, but I could tell there was going to be no arguing with him.’

  ‘So you went along?’

  Mia nodded. ‘I got a large bin bag from him and cleaned up the bathroom, all the glass, and washed off the whisky. Then I drained the tub and Laurence helped me get Adrienne out onto a plas
tic sheet. After that, I washed out the tub and picked up her clothes and stuff where she’d left it on the chair. I dried her off as best I could. We dressed her downstairs. It wasn’t easy, but she hadn’t . . . you know, her body wasn’t stiff or anything, so we got it done. Put her clothes and her bracelet back on.’

  ‘It was missing a charm,’ said Banks.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t notice that. It must have come off when she took it off to get in the bath.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I put all her other stuff in the bin bag. And the burners. It was a bit of a nasty night out, fog mostly, but it wasn’t impossible. Laurence said we should bury her somewhere, but I said we should just take her into the country and put her somewhere she’d be found before too long. That it would be cruel to bury her and have no one know where she was or what had happened to her. He was worried there’d be evidence linking him to her death, but I persuaded him that the bath would have washed everything away, and it would look like a suicide anyway, which he said he thought it was, and in the end he agreed we’d leave her somewhere more open.’

  Banks nodded. ‘It did look like a suicide, except we figured out pretty quickly that she didn’t die in the car. No sign of the whisky, for a start and, of course, we wondered how she had got there.’

  ‘I admit we weren’t exactly thinking too clearly. I just wanted her to be found. I mean, I knew you wouldn’t just assume it was her car, that you’d check and find the owner, but I thought you might accept that she’d just taken an overdose and wandered into the wilderness to die.’

  ‘People don’t really do that in real life, Mia.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve got too much imagination. Anyway, we were just driving around, and I saw that car on Belderfell with the POLICE AWARE sign. I’d seen them before and I knew it could be a few days before anyone got around to it. I’d like to say I was struck with the irony of it, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t in a mood for irony at all. We got her into the driver’s seat of the car – we were both wearing gloves – then we set off back.’

  ‘What about Hadfield?’

  Mia rubbed her eyes. ‘Laurence was in a really bad state when it was done. I think it just hit him all at once, you know, how real it was. Before that I think he’d been living off nervous energy, but when it was done and the body was gone, he started to get restless. He said he wanted to be sick, and we were near Tetchley Moor, so I pulled into the car park there and he got out. Then he said he needed some air, to think things over, and he headed out onto the moor.’

  ‘Were you worried that he might decide he needed to get rid of you?

  Mia glanced sharply at Banks. ‘No. Never. We were accomplices by then, in whatever we’d done. I couldn’t incriminate him without incriminating myself. We’d agreed to hush everything up. I had the bin bag full of Adrienne’s stuff – her handbag, the burner phone, Hadfield’s too, the towel we’d used to dry her off, the smashed whisky bottle – everything that could be incriminating.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘I took out the sim cards so I could destroy them, then I put a couple of heavy rocks in the bin bag and dumped it in that reservoir near Laurence’s house. Then I picked up the other burners over the next few days. I’d bought them all at once, you see, and I was paranoid that you might be able to trace them. I know I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I went around everyone and got them new ones, from different shops, a place in Huddersfield, another in Bradford, and so on. Maybe I’ve got too much imagination, but I’ve seen TV programmes where the police work magic with mobile phones, so I wanted to leave no traces of the original batch.’

  ‘What about Randall’s and Sarah Chen’s phones?’

  ‘I assume Randall must have got rid of them himself. He may be a bastard, but he’s not stupid. I didn’t see or hear from either him or Sarah again after they left that night. Not until . . . you know.’

  ‘We got as far as Argos,’ said Banks, ‘so your imagination probably served you well. What happened to Hadfield?’

  ‘I waited and waited and I thought I heard something, a cry or something, from the moor, so I got out and went up after him. It was hard to see up there in the mist, and I was worried I’d trip over some roots and twist my ankle or something. But before I’d got far, I saw him. Laurence. He was lying at the bottom of a gully, about twenty feet down. It was a pretty clear view, and I had my phone light with me. I could tell right away that he was dead. His neck was at an odd angle, there was a lot of blood on the ground, and he wasn’t moving. I called his name but got no answer. I couldn’t figure out a way to get down there.’

  ‘You didn’t think to call an ambulance?’

  ‘That would have meant questions. Just what we were trying to avoid. It was too late, anyway.’

  ‘What questions were you trying to avoid? Remember, there was only you left now. You and Randall.’

  ‘I didn’t know about Sarah. Not then. How could I? I got no answer when I tried to call them to tell them to destroy their phones. I just assume Randall did it, anyway.’

  ‘When did you find out about Sarah?’

  ‘Not until the body was found and it was in the papers.’

  ‘Randall didn’t tell you?’

  ‘No. Why would he?’

  ‘He didn’t ask for your help?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘Weren’t you worried about Sarah, though, before her body was found?’

  ‘Maybe a bit, when I couldn’t get through to her, but I assumed she’d just got rid of her burner phone, as I wanted. It made sense for us to keep apart for a while, till things blew over.’

  Banks sighed. ‘Oh, dear. You ought to know that things like that never blow over.’

  ‘Well, what would you have done?’

  ‘So you left Laurence Hadfield for dead in the gully. Then what?’

  ‘He was dead.’ Mia seemed to sulk for moment, then she said. ‘I went back to his house to make sure everything was in order. Wiped any surfaces I thought I’d touched. Checked the bathroom again, checked for anything of Adrienne’s that might still be there, clothes in the wardrobe and so on. Found nothing, so I left. I just dumped the bin bag in the water and went home. I was bloody exhausted by then.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were. And Adrienne was sitting dead in the broken-down car, Laurence Hadfield was lying at the bottom of the gully with a broken neck, and you’d no idea what had happened to Randall and Sarah?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m not proud of myself, but I didn’t see what else I could have done at the time.’

  Banks shook his head slowly. ‘There were dozens of things you could have done, Mia, should have done, and none of them were what you actually did.’

  ‘What will happen to me? Will I go to jail?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. That depends on the Crown Prosecution Service.’

  ‘But I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. You have to believe me.’ Her voice took on a pleading tone.

  ‘I know,’ said Banks. Though he didn’t. He didn’t know whether Mia had sneaked up behind Laurence Hadfield on Tetchley Moor and given him a little shove. He would like to think she hadn’t done, but he realised that he might never know for certain. As things stood, both Laurence Hadfield and Adrienne Munro had died by misadventure, and only Sarah Chen had been murdered.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mia said, turning her head to one side. ‘I’m tired. And I could use that bedpan now.’

  Banks would hardly have called the night out at the Queen’s Arms a celebration, but it was tradition to mark the successful conclusion of a case. The whole Eastvale crew was there, such as it was – Annie, Gerry, Winsome, a few of the uniforms, Jazz Singh, Stefan Nowak, Vic Manson and several CSIs – along with Ken Blackstone, DCs Collier and Musgrave and a few other members of his team. Despite the jokes and laughter, such occasions always held a residual sadness for Banks, who couldn’t help but think of, in this case, Adrienne Munro, Sarah Chen and Laurence Hadfield. In a way, the events of that fate
ful Saturday had been like the perfect storm. Things didn’t need to have happened that way, but they had.

  ‘Penny for them?’ It was Annie plonking a pint in front of him on the table and sitting down beside him.

  ‘What? Oh, just the usual, you know.’

  Annie nodded and clinked glasses. ‘To the fallen.’

  ‘To the fallen.’

  ‘So apart from Randall, nobody killed anybody else?’

  ‘So it would appear.’

  ‘What about Mia Carney? Will she do time?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Banks. ‘She’ll have to face some charges, but I’ve talked to Diane from the CPS, and they’ll probably strike some sort of bargain, after everything she’s been through. She might avoid prison. I suppose they could charge her with interfering with a dead body, wasting police time, perverting the course of justice, tampering with evidence, maybe even pimping and Lord knows what else, if they wanted to make an example of her, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, she might have suspected that Randall killed Sarah, but wasn’t involved. She’s not an accessory to murder. And she should have called an ambulance for Laurence Hadfield. I know it sounds trite, but I think she’s learned her lesson. Or a lesson.’

  ‘Ever the optimist.’

  Banks laughed. ‘It’s not often I get called that.’

  ‘Don’t fancy her, do you?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Methinks the man doth protest too much.’

  ‘I like her spirit, that’s all. There’s something refreshing about her. But I don’t like what she does. Anyway, I think she’s found someone else. The last time I went to visit her I saw Leila heading in while I was on my way out. She was carrying a bunch of flowers.’

  ‘Lucky Mia.’

  ‘Especially after the way she treated Leila. Still, it takes all sorts.’

  Annie clinked glasses again. ‘Spoken like a true wise man.’

  ‘You pissed already?’