First resolve — get a properly equipped medicine box.
But she didn’t need a thermometer to know that the only place for her now was bed. And if this was the flu, she would be quite happy to hibernate for however long it took, and to hell with the rest of the world.
Except that her answer machine was flashing, and she could never ignore it... she tottered across to it and pressed the rewind button, already starting to shed her clothes and put the kettle on for coffee and a flu powder.
‘Call me when you get back, Alex,’ said Nick Frobisher’s voice. ‘I’ve got some news.’
She groaned. Not now. Not yet. Whatever it was, it could wait. She only half-listened to the next message on the machine, not recognizing the voice at first, and then she felt her heart give a jolt.
‘How’s this for a blast from the past, doll?’ Gary Hollis’s arrogant voice said. ‘I might be seeing you soon, so keep the bed warm for me. Bye for now.’
He had a bloody nerve, thought Alex, but she couldn’t help a small smile all the same. Gary was the type who would expect to waltz right back into her life as if the last six months or so never existed. They had never been more than fair-weather friends, anyway — well, that, and a couple of spectacularly torrid lovers for a brief time, the honest part of her admitted — but that was it. It had never been a forever kind of partnership — so why the hell did it matter if he looked her up from time to time?
There were no more messages, and the mail could wait. She had checked the envelopes and there seemed to be nothing dodgy-looking about them, so she tossed them onto her sofa, made her coffee and hot drink, and fell into bed. If this was flu, she prayed it was the short, swift variety, and found herself wishing feebly and miserably that she had someone to tuck her in and look after her.
She didn’t remember anything about the next 48 hours except for floating to the bathroom from time to time and then crawling back into bed. Providing she didn’t die from hunger an enforced fast must be good for the diet, she thought — when she could think lucidly at all.
Halfway through the third morning she heard an urgent knocking on her door. She turned over, ignoring it. Her head still throbbed, but with not quite as much of a battering as before. But the knocking went on, and in the end, she pulled on her kimono, staggered to the door and croaked:
‘Who is it?’
‘Alex, it’s me, Charmaine from downstairs,’ came the bright young voice making Alex feel even more like Methuselah than usual, considering her flu. ‘I saw your car so I knew you were back, and I was dying to tell you about the job.’
‘Job?’ Alex said vaguely, and suddenly feeling ridiculous in acknowledging that she was talking to a door. A bit like Shirley Valentine talking to the wall... she opened the door a fraction, and saw Charmaine’s eagerly smiling face change at the sight of her.
‘My God, Alex, you look awful. Are you ill? I could come back — or can I do anything for you?’ she added as an afterthought.
Care in the community obviously didn’t come high on an out-of-work model-cum-actress’s agenda, Alex thought sourly, and then felt ashamed of herself for her lack of charity.
‘It’s only a touch of flu,’ she croaked again. ‘And you wouldn’t want to catch it if you’ve got a new job—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Charmaine said, pushing open the door and belying Alex’s earlier uncharitable thoughts. ‘You should be in bed, and I’m going to make us both a cup of coffee and tell you about the job, and then I’ll come back later and bring you some food. I’m making chicken curry tonight, so we could share it, though I probably shouldn’t get too close to you. Germs, you know,’ she added.
My God, I don’t know you at all, Alex thought in amazement. I didn’t know you cared — or that you could cook!
‘That’s very sweet of you, Charmaine, but I think I’m better off without eating,’ she said huskily, mentally resolving to be nicer to the girl in future, and practically revelling in the groans from her stomach as she pulled it in. ‘But coffee sounds wonderful, and you can tell me your news before you go.’
‘News?’ Charmaine said vaguely, always easily distracted. ‘Oh yes, the job! Well, I got it. It’s just a small part in an ad for dog food, and somebody else will be doing the voice-over. But it’s a start. isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is,’ Alex said. ‘Good for you.’
She was so elated it would be awful to put her down, even though it didn’t sound like much. But once Charmaine had made the coffee, and brought the biscuit tin with it, she edged her way out of the flat as Alex began coughing. She didn’t blame her. A budding TV star couldn’t afford to catch germs...
‘I’ll let you know about the party when it’s all fixed,’ she said as she left.
‘What party?’ But the door had already closed behind her.
Whenever it was, she wouldn’t go, anyway. She’d hardly have anything in common with Charmaine’s friends. They’d all be under twenty, fresh-faced and brimming over with libido and on the hunt. And what the hell was she thinking of, Alex thought, appalled at such a mid-life-crisis reaction. Wasn’t she twenty-six years old and in her prime, as Miss Jean Brodie would say?
And wasn’t she trying to fight off a flu bug with the energy of a flea, and feeling bloody sorry for herself? And it was no good, the biscuit tin was just too tempting to resist, and a lot of good she’d be to anybody if she simply faded away without anybody knowing. She had to have something to keep up her strength, and that proved that she must be getting better even if she didn’t feel it.
Half a dozen digestive biscuits heavily laced with butter and Branston pickle later, she felt strong enough to get dressed and to open the small pile of mail that seemed to be facing her reproachfully. Just as long as there was nothing from HIM, whoever he was — and until that moment she hadn’t even thought about it.
But the flat had been intact when she got home. Leanora’s notebook was still safely where she had left it — and she vowed to study it properly today, providing her head allowed her to concentrate, since she had no intention of going into her office. But first there was the mail.
Sniffing her way through a box of paper handkerchiefs, she slit open the envelopes. There were the usual business statements among several offers to make her a millionaire if she replied within ten days, providing she purchased a few useless items that nobody in their right minds would ever want. There was one small but welcome cheque from a client.
The final envelope contained a brochure advertising cosy cottages in the West Country for sale or rent, and her name had obviously come up in the junk mail lottery. Because she intended spending one more day giving in to her flu — and cossetting her-self because nobody else was likely to do so (Charmaine apart), she browsed through it with more attention than she normally would have done.
It looked idyllic. Some of the cottages in their lovely rural set-tings reminded her of her last big case — the one that had paid for the cruise, where she had met Leanora and begun the chain reaction that had culminated in discovering Moira’s body in her swimming-pool.
Alex gave a shudder, and closed the brochure at once, deciding to look at it later when she felt more like herself. Next time she took a brief holiday, maybe she’d go down to the West Country, to one of those sleepy little places where nothing ever happened.
Exmoor looked wonderful, and there were big towns near enough to go shopping if she felt the need…
‘What the hell am I thinking about?’ she muttered. ‘I’m a fixture here now. I’m a Londoner, a city girl, remember?’
The hell of it was that she wasn’t, not deep down, and she had no idea why that thought should keep drumming itself into her. Maybe she should see a psychiatrist to find out why she was so unsettled. Or maybe she already knew.
Dealing with the likes of the ill-fated Madame L. and her daughter, and their spooky hangers-on who thought so little of death claiming their friends, was enough to send anyone round the bend. And Alex wasn’t read
y for that yet.
As the day wore on, she realized she wasn’t feeling so bad, and decided that she was beating the bug after all. She nobly ate a miniscule lunch of soup, and then ruined it all by eating a great hunk of stale bread, which she had to soften in the microwave and then liberally spread with butter because it was solidly past its sell-by date, but which made her feel decidedly better for all that.
‘Now then, Leanora, let’s see what we can make of your notebook,’ she said to herself. ‘If you’re really up there, and you want me to solve your case, you’d better give me a sign or two. But nothing too obvious, thanks all the same,’ she added hastily. ‘Just direct me to the right name, OK?’
Oh yes, she must be feeling better to be able to direct her thoughts ‘upstairs’ without a qualm. She fetched the notebook and curled up on the sofa, feeling reasonably at peace with the world, considering. And as long as Leanora didn’t take her at her word, and start giving her Ouija board signs and making her fingers judder over the pages…
It was all meticulously written in Lenora’s spidery handwriting, and although many of the names were in ciphers or initials, others were not. The dates went a long way back, so it looked as if the Wolstenholmes had been doing their scam for some time, and Alex wondered how many of the prominent businessmen regretted ever visiting a psychic — or subscribing to the advertisement to consult her privately.
Alex hadn’t noticed it before, but there it was, slipped into a pocket at the back of the notebook, detailing Madame L’s credentials, and offering advice on everything from financial matters to affairs of the heart. There was a smudgy photograph of Leanora on the ad, suitably tarted up from the dun-coloured woman Alex remembered on the cruise ship. The small print added that more personal consultations at an undisclosed private address could be arranged with all discretion.
So there were obviously two sides to Leanora’s business. There were the casual holidaymakers just calling in at a seaside clairvoyant’s on impulse for a bit of fun. Then there were the more serious ones who probably never visited the Worthing business premises at all, but would be invited to the house on the hill for a more personal and discreet consultation. They would know the house. They would know the place where Moira had been murdered.
And one of them had to have been Mister Big, arriving in his big black car that was probably a Jaguar, consulting Leanora about his special problems, and turning Moira’s head into the bargain. The mysterious ‘boyfriend’ that Enid Lodge had mentioned.
Alex’s heartbeats raced now, because one thing was certain. They surely had to be pretty big problems for someone to want such discreet consultations, and if Moira had continued with the scam after her mother’s death, Mister Big had to be getting des-perate to have killed her too. She must have been fleecing him rotten.
You had to go through the possibilities of such a Mister Big. Royalty... politics... the church... financial wizards... some of the names in the notebook were fairly recognizable, but there were none that would cause the country’s downfall, and unfortunately, political and royal scandals were two a penny nowadays.
Alex’s fingers suddenly paused over the pages. Something was wrong. Here and there the dates skipped several weeks. There was nothing odd in that. Clearly, Leanora didn’t bother recording her dealings with small-fry, and there were frequently missing weeks.
But if she looked closely at the notebook Alex could see that some of the pages had been taken out. Very carefully taken out, so that an ordinary reader would hardly notice.
As if someone had gone to great pains to slice down the inner folds of the pages and lever them out. If she hadn’t looked at them minutely she wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
Alex felt a cold shiver run through her. She was perfectly certain she would have noticed it before now, because it was the kind of thing she had trained herself to do. So it must have happened recently. She couldn’t even be certain whether or not someone had intended her to pick up in it. What she was certain about, was that the notebook hadn’t been in this state before she went down to Worthing. She knew it.
She tried not to fall apart with nerves, reminding herself that she was in a vulnerable state after her sharp flu bout. But she knew that whoever had done this was skilled in taking just what he wanted and no more, and was capable of arousing no suspicion that anyone had even been here.
Her thoughts raced on, tumbling over themselves. Either someone had been in her flat and found the notebook while she was away. Or he had been here while she had been half deliriously fighting off the flu in the next room.
That was the worst thought. But whenever it was, he had been here. Touched her things. Maybe opened the bedroom door and watched her while she slept. Touched her. Leered at her silently while he went about his business. Maybe he had looked in her bathroom.
Knowing what shower gel she used, what deodorant, what perfume. Invading her privacy, her intimate self. Touching her knickers in the laundry basket. Running his fingers around them. Smelling them. Burying his face in them and getting off in the process…
Revolted and sickened at the bizarre images that she couldn’t stop, Alex tottered into the bathroom, ripped open the top of the laundry basket and grabbed the few items inside.
There was only what she had brought back from Worthing. A couple of pairs of knickers, a bra and T-shirt. She could hardly bear to touch them, but when she did so, she threw the lot into the bin.
The logical part of her brain that was still working told her there was no point in keeping them for fingerprints. Whoever had been here — if he had been in the bathroom — was far too expert to have left fingerprints.
And then she went back to the living-room to try to think sensibly — and to stop shaking.
Chapter 10
‘Nick,’ she croaked at his pager’s polite request to leave a message. ‘Can you come round to the flat sometime? The sooner the better. I have to talk to you.’
She slammed down her phone. Why couldn’t he have been there? she raged. Why, when she needed him? And why expect him to be there at her beck and call, when she had so often snubbed him in the past? She felt abject and humbled and very, very sick.
Without warning, she slapped her hand over her mouth as she began to retch, and tasted bitterness. She rushed back to the bathroom and just made it before she violently heaved up every-thing she had eaten into the lavatory bowl. So much for stale bread, and the stupid hope that the bluish crust may have provided some unrefined penicillin, she thought, with a pathetic attempt at humour.
But once she had swilled her mouth and cleaned her teeth several times, she crept back to the sofa and closed her eyes for a few minutes. And far from making her feel even more vulnerable, she gradually realized that the vomiting had had the converse effect of calming her down.
You’re as contrary as an unbroken filly, Audrey, her father used to blather.
Well, this time he was right, because she was finally starting to see things more clearly now. And what she saw was that this whole thing had got beyond her.
It was too big, and she needed Nick’s help. It wasn’t failure. It was common sense. No man was a bloody island... nor woman, either.
Nick didn’t get to the flat until late that afternoon. By then she had tentatively walked to the corner shop that grandly described itself as a twenty-four-seven, and bought some fresh provisions and a couple of ready-meals for the microwave. She had made herself a comfort dish of bread soaked in hot milk, which was her mother’s cure-all for lining delicate stomachs. In Alex’s opinion it was a revolting mush until it was well sprinkled with sugar to make it less pappy, but she had to admit that it always did the trick.
Nick came in to the flat with a broad smile that changed to alarm when he saw her pale face and the unkempt stringiness of her usually sleek red hair.
‘Good God, what’s happened to you, Alex?’
‘Flu. I’m over it now, but you’d better not get too close,’ she said, with an uncharacteristic ur
ge to weep at his obvious concern.
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘No need. I told you, I’m better now—’
‘You don’t look it. How long have you been like this?’
‘A couple of days, maybe more,’ she said vaguely. ‘I don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter anyway. That’s not why I asked you here.’
‘Well, it should be. What are friends for?’ he said, starting to get the angry look in his eyes that she knew so well. ‘Honestly, Alex, sometimes I despair of you.’
‘Well, don’t. I can take care of myself.’
But she couldn’t, not right now, and she knew it. She tried desperately to fight back the tears, but this time it was impossible, and the next minute she found herself wrapped tightly in his arms.
‘God, Alex, don’t you know I’d be happy to take care of you all the time if only you’d let me?’ he said roughly against her cheek. ‘Except that there’s a rather disgusting smell in your hair, darling, and it’s enough to put anybody off. It’s hardly your usual perfume. What the hell is it?’
‘Sick, I expect,’ she muttered, feeling even more wretched to think that she hadn’t noticed it herself. ‘I’m a real mess, aren’t I?’
‘It’s nothing that we can’t put right, my love,’ he said gently.
‘And I’m a dab hand at hair-washing. Lead me to the bathroom and we’ll soon have you smelling sweet again.’
‘You needn’t — you can’t — I’m not up to it—’
But he led her to the bathroom, and she had no more fight left in her. He sat her on a stool and ordered her to lean back over the wash-basin while he ran the hot water over her tangled hair. And then he began slowly massaging the shampoo into it with strong, deft fingers, and Alex closed her eyes, becoming aware that it was not only soothing, it was immensely sensual... almost orgasmic, in fact... and she had to hold herself together before he became aware of it too.
Illusions (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 2) Page 17
