by Val McDermid
'I don't know. It's my job to assess the credibility of the witness. '
'You mean to figure out if he's lying? You're like a human lie detector?'
Charlie chuckled. 'In a way.'
'Then the person you need to speak to is Jay Macallan Stewart. Ask her to her face if she is responsible for my man's death. And you'll see it in her eyes. The feral person behind her smooth outside.'
'Unfortunately, they don't let me do that. Tell me, Liv. Did you ever try to establish whether Jay Stewart had been in the area when Ulf was killed?'
This time, when she spoke Charlie could hear grief instead of the earlier anger. 'I printed some photos of her from the web. I took them round hotels and bars and restaurants and car-rental agencies. But it's a tourist area. Nobody looks twice at their customers. They just run their credit cards and pretend to look at their passports. Also, I don't bet that she did it herself. '
'So the only evidence is the program?'
'It's not much, is it? But it's about Ulf and his work. It's about him getting credit for leaving his mark on how we live.'
That struck Charlie as the most telling thing Liv Aronsson had said. It restored the human dimension to what had happened to Ulf Ingemarsson. 'I'll do what I can,' she said.
'I am not going to hold my breath,' Liv said, not unkindly. 'But if you can find something you can punish Jay Macallan Stewart for, be sure you send me a ticket.'
23
Magda's intention to tell Jay about her encounter with Nigel Fisher Boyd had been thwarted by her lover's inability to stay awake. She'd looked tired in spite of her obvious pleasure at seeing Magda and they'd barely cleared the precincts of the airport when Jay's eyelids had fluttered and she'd slumped in her seat. Their relationship was new enough for Magda to find this endearing. 'She trusts me enough to sleep while I drive,' she told herself. It didn't cross her mind that nobody could survive the amount or the type of travel Jay had done over the past few years without learning to sleep when you were tired, no matter where you were.
When Magda pulled into the underground garage, Jay unwound, stretching and yawning as cats do. 'Nice driving,' she said in a sleepy drawl. 'Sorry I wasn't company for you. But I did tell you not to bother.'
'It wasn't a bother. I wanted to see you. Being in the car with you asleep is better than being home alone.' Magda leaned over and kissed Jay. 'Besides, now you've had a nap, you'll be restored and refreshed.'
Jay laughed. 'Ah, the insatiable appetites of the young.' She grabbed her bag from the back of the car and followed Magda upstairs. 'I hope you don't have to be up too early in the morning.'
After that, there hadn't been a suitable moment to bring up her strange encounter in the wine bar. And in the morning, Jay had already been at the computer when Magda got up. She'd stopped work for long enough to share a pot of coffee and some toast, but it was clear her mind was still on work.
By the time Magda returned from the hospital, the bearer bonds were burning a hole in her mind, never mind her bag. She hung up her coat and went in search of Jay, who was sweating in the sauna she'd had installed in the basement garage. There was nothing for it but to strip off and join her. Jay looked pleased to see her, rolling on to her stomach on the higher bench the better to watch her settle lower down where the heat wasn't quite so fierce. 'You're like a salamander,' Magda said. 'I can't take the heat like you can.'
'It's just a matter of getting used to it. Give it time, you'll be fighting me for space up here. Have you had a good day?'
'The usual sort of thing.' Magda sighed. 'I had to tell a woman her seven-year-old isn't going to make it to another Christmas. That took the gloss off my day.'
Jay ruffled Magda's hair, already damp with sweat. 'That's just one of the reasons why I prefer doing what I do. The worst news I have to deal with is that the best brasserie in Deauville has closed down.'
'Yeah, but you don't get those magic moments where you tell someone that their treatment has worked. That's a kick that money can't buy.' Magda arched her back, stretching her spine, feeling some of the day's tensions leach away. She shifted her position so she was at right angles to Jay, able to see her face. Studying her lover's face still captivated her. She wanted to memorise every line and angle, every expression, every detail. 'I missed you when you were away. I always do, it's like there's a space in my day where you should be.'
Jay chuckled. 'That'll wear off soon enough. You'll be counting the days till my next trip and your next chance to do whatever it is you're not doing now we're together.'
'I don't think it will. I always felt entirely self-sufficient. I never bothered when Philip was away. Or any of my other boyfriends. But with you, it's an active absence. Something happens, I want to tell you. I hear some stupid story on the news and I want to rant to you about it.'
'That's very sweet,' Jay said, her voice husky. 'I don't think anyone's ever said anything like that to me before. My lovers in the past have tended to confess that they quite enjoyed having their space when I was out of town. I must admit though, when I was gone this time, there were moments I really wanted to share with you too. And that's not like me. I've always believed that line about travelling fastest when you travel alone.'
'Travelling fast, you can miss a lot.'
'That was always a chance I was willing to take,' Jay said with a rueful half-smile. 'Throw some water on the coals, would you?'
Magda reached for the wooden ladle in the water bucket and scattered some drops of water on the coals. The steam that clouded up from the brazier took her breath away, making it hard to breathe for a moment. You take my breath away. When she could get some air back into her lungs, she said, 'I had a strange encounter on Tuesday evening.'
'Don't tell me your father came up to London to horsewhip me.'
Magda groaned. 'Don't. You can be very sick and scary sometimes.'
'OK, so it wasn't Henry on the warpath. What else could it have been? Another dyke came on to you?'
Magda reached up and shoved Jay's shoulder. 'As if. No, it was a man. And before you get all outraged, there was nothing remotely sexual in the encounter.'
'I'm glad to hear it. But before you go on, let me say that just because you are with me, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it when someone flirts with you. I don't have a problem with other people wanting what I have.'
'Oh.' Magda dragged it over four disappointed syllables. 'Aren't you going to be jealous and badly behaved?' She tutted. 'Honestly, you're just so well adjusted.'
'I'll be cool about it. Until they step over the line. And then I'll remove their spleen. Through the nose. With a crochet hook.' Jay looked momentarily stern, then the giggles tripped in. 'Sorry,' she spluttered. 'Tell me about your strange encounter.'
'I popped out to Sainsbury's and when I got back, this bloke I'd never seen before was waiting for me. Nigel Fisher Boyd.'
Jay made a face indicating she'd never heard the name.
'He's something to do with financial services. He didn't go into detail and I didn't ask. He seemed a bit creepy to me, a bit spivvy, you know? He claimed he was a friend of Philip's but I knew he was lying because he called him Phil and he hated that.'
'What did he want? Was he trying to get you to invest in some scheme?'
Magda laughed. 'You sound like a bulldog. No, he wasn't trying to get me to part with my money. Quite the opposite. He was there because he had something belonging to Philip that he wanted to pass on to me.'
Jay pushed herself up on her elbows. Magda couldn't help admiring the line of her shoulders, the fullness of her breasts. Trickles of sweat ran salt down her body and she longed to lick them. 'Sounds intriguing.' She frowned. 'If a little overdue.'
Magda sighed. 'Well, it turns out there was a good reason for that. He gave me eight hundred thousand euros in bearer bonds, Jay.'
'What?' Jay's face froze in an expression of absolute incredulity. Magda had never seen her look so shocked.
'I know. I was completely freaked out
too. I've never even seen a bearer bond. The only reason I'd ever heard of them was Patrick went through a phase of watching Die Hard every night and that's what Alan Rickman's crew are supposed to be stealing. But that's what these are, supposedly.'
'But why?'
Just thinking about this aspect of her story made Magda feel tearful. 'This Nigel Fisher Boyd said it was Philip's profits from insider trading.'
Jay's eyes widened further. 'Insider trading? Philip was insider trading?'
'According to Fisher Boyd, yes. It's incredible. I thought I knew Philip. But the Philip I knew wasn't a crook. And I wondered for a moment if it was some kind of twisted practical joke. But eight hundred thousand euros isn't the kind of money you use to fuck with somebody's head. And then I thought of what you did and I started to freak out.'
Jay sat up and lowered herself on to the bench beside Magda. 'Christ Almighty,' she said. 'We could have totally fucked ourselves. I went through all Philip's stuff, business and personal, with a fine tooth comb and I didn't see a trace of anything dodgy. It wasn't hard to figure out the paper trail with Joanna and Paul once I had an idea what I was looking for. But I thought Philip was clean. I'd never have written those letters if I'd thought ...' She covered her face with her hands. 'God, we've had a lucky escape,' she said, letting out a long breath.
'We're in the clear now, though, aren't we? It's not like you made up the fact that Joanna and Paul were insider trading. All you did was bring it to the attention of the authorities.'
'But it's only a motive if Philip was clean,' Jay protested. 'If he was as bad as them, why on earth would he shop them?' Jay smacked the side of her fist down on the bench. 'Fuck.'
Magda thought back to her conversation with Charlie. Some instinct told her this wasn't the time to tell Jay she'd confided in someone else. 'You could argue that maybe they were being careless and threatening to bring the whole edifice tumbling down. And Philip was trying to shut them down on his terms.'
'It's a line we could use if it ever comes to it,' Jay said. 'But we were so sure that Joanna and Paul had killed him. You remember? That's the only reason I went trawling through all the financial stuff in the first place. I was looking for a reason why they would want rid of him. I went hunting for motive, and when I saw what they'd been doing, it seemed so obvious. Without that, I'd never have taken the risk of faking the letters to make the motive obvious to the police.' Jay shook her head. 'But if he was doing it too, there's no way he would have been threatening their activities. So their motive disappears. Why would they have wanted to kill him?'
Magda was perplexed, not least because she hadn't worked that out for herself. She was supposed to be smart. Was this what love did to you? Turned your brain to incompetent mush? 'I don't know. Maybe they wanted his share of the business.'
'Then they should have killed him before the wedding, because afterwards, there's no question of his share going anywhere else except to you.' Jay ran her hands through her hair in agitation. 'Christ, Magda. This is a nightmare.'
'I don't see how it changes anything. They killed him, Jay. That's the bottom line. They did slip away from the party at the crucial time. I saw them, just yards away from where Philip died.'
'But that's not what you told the court, is it? You didn't tell the exact truth about where you saw them because you had to lie about where you were. You were with me, not in your mother's office.'
'But nobody knows that. The defence never tried to cast any doubt on my story. It's history now, Jay.'
Jay looked a million miles from convinced. 'It's not over. There's sentencing, there's appeal. If what Philip was up to comes out, they're not the ones with the motive any more, Magda. That would be you and me.'
Magda was taken aback by Jay's agitation. If she'd thought about it in advance, she'd have expected it to freak her out. Instead, her bedside manner kicked in and she reacted as if she was dealing with a parent faced with a terrible diagnosis. Magda put her arm round Jay's shoulders, shocked by the tension she could feel in her muscles. 'But we're OK. I'm your alibi.'
'Which makes me your alibi.' Jay gave a bleak laugh. 'And you don't think some people might wonder about that? We end up together after a secret tryst at your wedding?'
'It wasn't like that,' Magda protested. 'And you know it.'
'We know that, but the world might not see it like that. We have a secret meeting, your husband is murdered, leaving you a very rich widow. And I step in and sweep you off your feet.'
'That's crazy. It's not like you need the money, for God's sake. You're worth millions more than me.'
Jay wiped her face with the back of her hand. 'For some people there's no such word as "enough". Trust me, Magda, it wouldn't be hard to make us look very bad indeed if this ever came out.'
'Well, it's not going to come out, is it? Even if - and it's a huge if - anybody finds out what Philip was up to, they're not going to find out you forged the letters.'
Jay leaned into her lover. 'I suppose not,' she said wearily. 'But there is one thing you've not taken into consideration.'
'What's that?'
'Without a motive, it's hard to picture Joanna and Paul killing Philip. And if they didn't kill him . . . who did, Magda? Who did?'
Part Three
1
Friday
I t was the first night Jay could remember that they'd slept together without making love. The conversation begun in the sauna had chased its own tail for the rest of the evening, always coming back to the terrible point where they had to confront their decision to point the police in the direction of the people they were convinced had killed Philip. They kept revisiting the afternoon when they'd lain in bed and talked through the failure of the police to make any headway in solving Philip's murder.
Jay, who knew her Agatha Christie, had spoken then of the ordeal by innocence, the taint that would always cling to Magda if nobody was brought to book for the crime. 'Even though everyone who knows you and knows the situation wouldn't think for a moment you could have killed Philip. But that doesn't matter to the pumpkins out there. As soon as we come out, before you know it, there'll be a Facebook lynch mob, "I bet I can find a million people who believe Magda Newsam is an evil man-hating lesbian who murdered her husband for the money."'
And it wasn't as if they'd made anything up. The insider trading was real enough. Jay had just made it obvious. Even now, she couldn't avoid feeling proud of how well she'd handled the situation. It was a great feeling, to sort out so big a thing for someone you loved. Now she just had to pray that it stayed sorted the way they'd arranged it. Otherwise they could end up changing places with Paul Barker and Joanna Sanderson. That would be the nightmare scenario - her and Magda taking the fall. That simply couldn't be allowed to happen, and she'd do whatever it took to make sure it never did.
Worst-case scenario, there was always the Costa Rica option.
With all this on their minds, she thought it was a miracle they'd slept at all. But Magda had exhaustion on her side. And even Jay had managed to fall asleep in the coldest, darkest part of the night.
She'd had meetings for most of the day, her mind occupied with 24/7's latest expansion plans. The only disruption in the smooth flow had been Anne recounting an odd encounter with some cop who'd come to the office wanting to know whether they'd had some cold-case suspect as an intern. 'It was while we were still in the development stages, so obviously we didn't have any work placements running then,' she'd said. 'And you were travelling all week, so it was even less likely.'
'When was this?'
'May 2004,' Anne said, already turning over to the next page in their agenda for the morning. She gave Jay a look freighted with meaning. 'The week Ulf Ingemarsson died.'
Jay resisted a shudder. She remembered May 2004. What the hell was going on? Inquiries from strange detectives about her movements around the time Ingemarsson was murdered might not be quite as innocent as they appeared. As if she didn't have enough on her mind. No, in May 2004, sh
e certainly wasn't wiping the arse of some graduate intern. 'Definitely not,' she said.
'Odd, though,' Anne said absently, scribbling some notes in the margin. 'After he'd gone, I remembered how I had to look out your travel receipts for that nice Spanish detective who came over after the girlfriend started kicking off. I knew exactly where you'd been and when, but he said he needed proof.'
Of course she'd known exactly where Jay had been. Anne's devotion was legendary. The lengths to which she would go to ensure smooth running for Jay's professional life knew no limits. Jay suspected that Anne was in love with her but that she preferred the attachment to be unrequited. You could never discover someone's feet of clay if you didn't actually push the relationship to intimacy, after all. It was an arrangement that suited both of them. But sometimes, like today, Jay wondered if she really knew everything Anne did in her service. She had a sneaky suspicion there were things she would be better off not knowing.
It was a relief to get away from the office and walk back through the quieter side streets of Knightsbridge. She never allowed the office to follow her on her walks; she'd mastered the art of letting her mind roam free. It always amazed her how London changed so quickly. You could go from the bustle and throb of a main artery to empty residential streets in a couple of minutes. Her own house felt like an oasis, the triple glazing keeping the city's rattle and hum at bay. But there were plenty of escapes from the bustle if you knew where to look. She remembered her first encounter with the London the tourists don't see.
After she and Louise had been split apart like a log under an axe, Jay had let herself be picked up at a gay night in one of the Oxford clubs by a good-looking butch in bike leathers. Susanne was a graphic artist who lived in North London and came to Oxford to visit her sister. They both knew there was nothing between them but fun, and there had been no hard feelings when Jay had abandoned Susanne at the party where she'd met Ella Marcus. Ella was the fashion editor of the kind of women's magazine that featured clothes no normal woman would ever wear. She was glamorous, prosperous and she liked Jay's mix of intellectual sophistication and cultural naivete. She enlivened Jay's final year at Oxford and initiated her into the kind of life it was possible to live in the capital. Theatre, galleries, art house cinema and an absolute commitment to the cutting edge. Once the mass market got its hands on something, it was over for Ella and her crew.
