Chelsea Wives

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

  Suddenly a woman popped her head round the door.

  ‘Gov, a word,’ she said.

  Mitch was grateful for the distraction.

  ‘For the benefit of the tape, WPC Maggie Barber has just entered the room.’

  ‘There are a hundred reporters outside already,’ Barber whispered to him. ‘Someone must’ve tipped them off again about the Forbes case. Sebastian Forbes is going nuts, demanding to see his wife and threatening all sorts. The Commissioner is on his way, and boy, does he sound pissed off – thought I should warn you.’

  Mitch sighed deeply and rubbed his temple roughly with his hand.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Maggie, this really is turning into the day from hell.’

  Barber nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Forbes is having a major hissy fit, blathering on about a press conference with the Arab prince or something. Anyway, the snouts are having a field day – we’ve already had all the majors on the phone demanding to know if we’ve got Imogen Forbes in custody. Innocent or not,’ Maggie said gravely, ‘I’d hate to be in that woman’s Manolos come tomorrow morning.’

  Turning back to Imogen with a heavy heart, Mitch resumed his questioning.

  ‘Mrs Forbes, are you familiar with someone by the name of Amandine Lamarque?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. She’s a very famous artist. I recently commissioned her to produce a statue of my husband … a birthday present.’

  He paused for a long moment. ‘Mrs Lamarque confirms that as part of her commission, she made casts of your husband’s face and hands. Lifelike casts in a human skin-like substance that could, if required, pass as the real thing, fingerprints and all. She’s infamous for using this special material by all accounts, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Imogen responded, carefully. ‘I know her only as an artist. I’m not too familiar with the substance you mention.’

  ‘Would you say then, that it was coincidence that after having been paid a visit by you, personally thanking her for her work on your husband’s statue, that those casts should go missing?’

  ‘Missing?’ Imogen feigned surprise. ‘I had no idea they were missing,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I think we both know that’s not entirely true,’ Mitch said, feeling the conflict within himself rise. This all felt so wrong. Horribly wrong. He wanted to be making love to her, not sealing her fate and helping to send her to prison.

  ‘Inspector McLaren, may I remind you that it is protocol not to intimidate a witness,’ Parkinson said in his perfectly clipped tones. ‘My client has answered your questions most fully and without prompt. She is here of her own free will to help …’

  ‘She is here,’ Mitch replied quietly, ‘because on the night of July 31st, your client, Mister Parkinson, did, alongside two accomplices, break into her husband’s bank and move the Bluebird diamond – am I right, Imogen? That is right, isn’t it?’

  ‘No!’ Imogen retaliated. ‘That’s absurd! You’re wrong.’

  ‘And on said night in question,’ Mitch continued, ‘a one Mr Derrell Richards did stumble upon you and your accomplices after which he suffered a coronary and collapsed at the scene, is that not also right, Mrs Forbes?’

  ‘No!’ Imogen said, louder this time, though less convincingly. A vision of Dickie suddenly flashed up in her mind, lying there in that hospital bed, rigged up to a machine that was keeping him alive.

  ‘No! Nooooo!’

  Mitch paused for a moment, a rush of self-loathing threatening to choke him. He took a sip of his water in a bid to disguise his anguish.

  ‘May I ask why, Mrs Forbes, if you claim to have been at Mrs Rothschild’s house between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and let’s say, for argument’s sake, 3:00 a.m. the following morning on the night in question, does Mrs Rothschild’s neighbour claim to have seen you leave the premises soon after arriving at 8.30 p.m., only to then return some two or so hours later?’

  Imogen lit another cigarette, unable to stop her hand from shaking uncontrollably.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I was there all night like I told you; we all were.’

  ‘Aside from yourself, Mrs Rothschild and Lady Belmont-Jones, who, might I add, conveniently seems to have left the country, no one can vouch for having seen you come or go anywhere that evening. Neither your own nor Calvary Rothschild’s respective and combined fleet of hired help saw or heard what time you came or went. I find that rather funny, don’t you?’

  ‘Mrs Rothschild’s neighbour must be mistaken,’ Imogen said flatly.

  Mitch sighed ruefully. Imogen was not going down without a fight and this saddened him more than he knew possible. He had ruined her life once before and now he would be complicit in doing it again.

  ‘A coincidence then: three women whose whereabouts is at best ambiguous and three perpetrators of a crime committed on that very same evening their whereabouts is in question.’

  ‘I’d say that’s just it; a coincidence,’ Imogen said evenly, her confident tone belying the raw terror she felt inside. She looked up at Mitch, her eyes glassy with the tears that were threatening to spill from them and extinguished her cigarette in the small glass ashtray. ‘And anyway, how on earth would I have known the codes?’ Imogen met his gaze, watching her reflection in his teal green eyes. ‘Even if, as you suggest, I had casts of my husband’s face and hands to allow access to the vault, how would I have possibly known the code to get down into the vault? My husband changes the code each week. I am many things, Inspector,’ she said, ‘but I’m not a mind reader.’

  Mitch held her gaze. He loved her in that moment, just as he had done the second his eyes had rested upon her that day in the British Library over a decade ago.

  ‘Perhaps you already knew the code,’ he suggested, ‘even before your husband did.’

  Imogen smiled.

  ‘That would be terribly clever of me, don’t you think?’ she remarked, unblinking.

  Mitch nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded. ‘It would.’

  A soft, sad snort escaped Imogen’s glossy lips.

  ‘Anyway, you’re forgetting one thing in all of this, Inspector,’ she said, meeting his eyes with her own.

  ‘Oh?’ He stared at her, forgetting, momentarily, that there were others in the room, others watching them.

  ‘Motive,’ she said eventually. ‘What possible motive could I have to want to hurt my own husband?’

  CHAPTER 61

  Outside of the interview room, Sebastian Forbes paced along the narrow corridor.

  ‘Can I bring you something more to drink, Mr Forbes?’ WPC Maggie Barber asked, out of kindness more than duty.

  ‘Yes,’ Sebastian snapped back rudely. ‘You can bring me some proper coffee. None of this instant muck. Tastes like the bloody Thames,’ he complained, nodding at the full plastic cup on the small table.

  Maggie Barber held her tongue. She had been considering how to help Sebastian Forbes make an escape from the press who had been congregating outside for the past few hours, spare him the indignity of having to face their questions. Now, however, she was of a mind simply to open the doors and feed him to the lions. ‘My wife, for goodness’ sake!’ Sebastian continued to rant. ‘Arrested! You don’t have any real suspects, so you thought you’d persecute my family instead, eh?’ He snorted, incredulous. ‘I mean, Imogen, of all people. Beautiful she might be, but a criminal mastermind? It’s preposterous. The woman struggles to remember what day of the week it is.’ Sebastian continued to vent his anger and frustration on the young WPC. ‘Well, once the Commissioner hears about this, he’ll have your bloody jobs – all of you.’

  ‘Mr Forbes,’ Maggie said tightly, ‘I appreciate that you’re upset but this is a police station, not Starbuc …’ Suddenly her attention was caught by a commotion going on at the reception desk.

  ‘Miss, I’m afraid you can’t go in there … Miss!’ the desk sergeant cried as the small figure, ignoring his pleas, waltzed right past him down the corridor towards where Ma
ggie Barber and Sebastian Forbes were standing.

  As she grew closer, Maggie Barber watched all colour drain from Sebastian Forbes’s face.

  ‘Dear God,’ she heard him whimper as he stumbled back into the wall, attempting to grab on to it for support as he slid down, his face contorted in horror and disbelief. Maggie immediately rushed to his aid. ‘It can’t be … It can’t be …’

  ‘Something the matter, Sebastian?’ the small woman smirked as she breezed past them, nose in the air. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  ‘Mr Forbes!’ Maggie said, alarmed, as she watched Sebastian lose consciousness. ‘Mr Forbes, are you OK?’

  *

  Imogen searched Mickey’s face as she stood, attempting to communicate with him through her eyes: Please, Mickey, if there was once anything between us, anything at all, you will stop this and let me go. Please, just let me go.

  Seeing the fear in her eyes made Mitch McLaren want to scream with frustration.

  ‘Imogen, please, sit down,’ Mitch said calmly.

  She sat back down on the orange plastic chair and looked at him, the ghost of a man she had once loved; a broken man who had lived by his choices, choices that had robbed him of a lifetime of happiness and love. Mickey was dead. And she would mourn him all over again.

  ‘Do you own a necklace? A small silver necklace?’ Mitch asked, his voice was gentle, like a baby’s breath and she allowed it to envelop her, to remind her of the sound of his voice in her ear as he had made love to her all those years ago.

  Imogen resisted the urge to bring her fingers up to her neck, to gently play with the thin strand of silver hidden underneath her light summer scarf. She had kept her promise; she had rarely taken it off since he had given it to her. It had been around her neck on the night of the heist and it seemed ironic somehow, that it would now help seal her fate. ‘I have many necklaces,’ she replied, her voice a little croaky. Parkinson handed her a plastic cup of water and she smiled, grateful to him.

  ‘One in particular,’ he said lightly. ‘A thin silver chain with a tiny shell pendant.’

  She looked up at him then, her eyes wide and wet with tears and she smiled, a smile so small and sad that he was forced to turn away from her. She knew she had nowhere left to run, and she was tired of all the lies. It was time to come clean.

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed, after a long pause, bringing her hand up to the chain around her neck, ‘I do …’ But just as she made to continue, the door to the interview room swung open and through it breezed a small, exquisitely-dressed woman, closely followed by a harassed looking Maggie Barber.

  ‘I’m sorry, gov,’ Maggie spluttered, raising her shoulders apologetically, ‘she just – ’

  ‘I just barged right in, sorry about that,’ the woman said, finishing Barber’s sentence for her, as all eyes rested upon her.

  Imogen let out a scream as she dropped her plastic cup, a look of sheer terror and confusion etched on her beautiful face as water spilled across the table and cascaded down onto her lap in silver ribbons. She did not even feel it as it soaked through her silk dress and onto her skin.

  ‘It’s just that I had to come, you see,’ the woman announced, her loud voice belying her diminutive size, ‘when I saw on the news about Imogen’s arrest. I had to come and tell you the truth about where she was that night, about who she is protecting and why. You see, she was with me,’ the woman explained, matter-of-fact, ‘they all were. And I swore them all to secrecy – oh and poppet,’ she said, pulling a handkerchief from her quilted Chanel shopper and handing it to Imogen whose eyes were as wide as saucers. She had stopped screaming now and seemed to have gone into a state of shock, ‘you’re spilling water all down your Marant.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mitch McLaren said, shaking his head perplexed, not to mention a little irritated, by the sudden interruption, ‘and you are who exactly?’

  ‘Oh come now, Mickey,’ the woman turned to face him, looking him up and down, indignant. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?’ She flashed him a wounded look. ‘The name’s Lucas,’ she said, raising one very arched, very dark, and perfectly plucked eyebrow, ‘Cressida Lucas.’

  CHAPTER 62

  ‘Isn’t it just the most spectacular view you’ve ever seen?’ Yasmin stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down upon the magnificent Var Valley below, admiring the miniature hamlets dotted in the distance like doll’s houses.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say it’s rather nice,’ Jeremy replied, disinterested, as he peeped over the edge of the rock face and flinched.

  ‘Well, I think it’s beautiful,’ she breathed in deeply, enjoying the cool air as it rushed into her lungs.

  ‘Perhaps you ought to take a step or two back though, darling,’ he suggested, ‘we’re terribly close to the edge here.’ Jeremy’s vertigo had been playing havoc with him all afternoon; in fact, it had got so bad it had quite ruined his appetite.

  ‘The picnic lunch was divine,’ Yasmin said as she began to delve into the large wicker hamper they had brought with them, pulling out a second bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

  ‘Are you sure you want another, darling?’ he asked tremulously. ‘Remember, one of us has to drive back down that bloody rock face!’

  One of us being the operative word, she thought to herself, her head a little hazy from champagne and adrenalin.

  ‘Oh come on, Jeremy, live a little. We’re hardly likely to run into any gendarmerie up here,’ she said, popping the cork and filling two Tiffany champagne flutes to the brim. Jeremy sighed, acquiescing. Perhaps she was right; he would feel more relaxed with a drop more fizz inside him, he thought, gulping back almost half the glass in one hit.

  ‘Chin chin, darling,’ Yasmin said, raising her glass and eyebrow simultaneously. ‘Here’s to new beginnings.’

  ‘New beginnings?’ he enquired, tapping her flute with his own.

  ‘Yes,’ she purred. ‘Today I am reborn; today I begin my life all over again.’

  ‘I don’t think I quite follow you,’ Jeremy said, one eye distractedly glancing down at the gorge below them.

  ‘More sashimi?’ she asked, placing some onto a fork and bringing it up towards Jeremy’s mouth.

  ‘Mmm, very good,’ he said, swallowing it greedily. ‘You were saying something about being reborn …’

  Yasmin smiled a wicked smile. ‘I’ve been reading up on a little Buddhism,’ she said. ‘It really does make a lot of sense.’

  ‘I’ve always been an eye for an eye man myself,’ Jeremy remarked, with a healthy dose of cynicism. ‘Though fate has a way of righting the wrongs in life, in my experience.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Yasmin smirked. ‘My mother always said that we make our own fate in life … or maybe it was luck, I can’t quite remember which,’ she said, an image of her mother suddenly flashing up in her mind. She had once been so beautiful, before the drugs and the drink had taken hold of her, turning her haggard and old before her time.

  Jeremy’s interest was ignited. His wife rarely ever mentioned her parents.

  ‘You miss your mother?’ Jeremy asked, rolling onto his enormous stomach, resting his chins in his hands.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said wanly, though she had stopped grieving for her years ago now. The fact was, she had done most of her mourning while she had still been alive. ‘But I think I miss my sister more,’ she added.

  ‘Your sister?’ Jeremy was surprised. ‘I never even knew you had a sister.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Yasmin nodded. ‘Did I not mention her before?’

  ‘Well no, you certainly didn’t!’

  ‘Oh,’ she shrugged. ‘Her name is Chloe.’

  ‘A pretty name,’ Jeremy said, guzzling back the remains of his glass.

  ‘She’s off travelling the world at the moment, saving children in Africa and that sort of thing.’ Yasmin liked the way that sounded and wondered, sadly, if indeed Chloe might have gone on to do such laudable things in life, given the chance.

  ‘She’s a VSO
?’ Jeremy asked, shocked that he was only just learning of her existence now.

  ‘Something like that,’ she replied. ‘She’s terribly beautiful and terribly kind and I love her dearly.’ Yasmin felt a lump form in the back of her throat as she peered over the edge of the cliff.

  Refocusing on the task ahead she purred, ‘No one can see us up here,’ and pulled her dress up over her head, revealing the fact that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Jeremy’s eyes widened from beneath his Ray-Ban aviators and he let out a little whistle.

  ‘I say darling, you really are a sight for sore eyes,’ he said, drinking in her perfect form. Just for a moment, Jeremy forgot all about his vertigo.

  ‘I want us to make love, naked, in front of the sunset.’

  Jeremy didn’t need telling twice as he struggled to wriggle his fleshy body out of his snug golfing shorts.

  Yasmin watched him with a mix of pity and contempt as he lay there, naked and exposed, his white, fleshy body incongruous with the warmth and beauty of such surroundings.

  Swigging from the champagne bottle, she straddled her husband for what she decided would be the last time, sliding herself down onto him, gently rocking back and forth until he began to moan with pleasure. As she built up her momentum, grinding her pelvis hard down onto him, her generous breasts bouncing up and down, she found herself thinking about Sammie Grainger. Yasmin wondered if she had been as good as her word and had taken good care of the tape for her. She found herself hoping she would see her again soon, her mind whirring with thoughts of her cashmere soft skin and that kiss.

  ‘That’s it,’ Yasmin whispered under her breath as she felt Jeremy’s orgasm building beneath her, ‘that’s it, you filthy, murdering bastard.’

  ‘What? What are you saying, you naughty girl?’ he asked breathlessly, red and sweaty from a few moments exertion. But before she could answer, Jeremy’s face contorted into an orgasmic grimace and he let out an almighty groan. Yasmin swallowed back her nausea. She was so close to the final part of her plan now that she could almost reach out and touch it.