False Impression

by Veronica Heley

  ‘Don’t try to avoid the issue. Why are you here?’

  He showed the whites of his eyes. Ready to bolt? ‘Dilys invited me.’

  ‘Dilys hid you. And fed you. And plugged your infernal smartphone into our office computers, which has infected the system and brought the agency to a standstill.’

  He grinned. ‘Did it? How odd. It must have been that email I got from the Royal Academy. A bit strange, I thought at the time. I mean—’

  ‘Did you infect our system deliberately?’

  A hurt look. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Really. Not at all my style.’

  ‘All right. I accept that. But it has caused us a lot of aggro and upset Dilys no end.’

  ‘Well, she is easily upset.’

  ‘So am I, though it takes me a different way. Back to basics. Why are you here?’

  The whites of his eyes showed again. His breathing quickened. He looked away. He was going to lie. ‘I had a call, I was needed on a job, a television series, in Spain. I have to get out there straight away, but I’d lost my keys, the keys to the flat I share with my friend, and he was out last night, an all-nighter, I remembered that too late, and I couldn’t get in to get my passport and my clothes, and I couldn’t think at first what to do, and then I remembered where Dilys was staying, and I called round to see her, and she invited me to stay for the night. I’ll ring my friend and get him to let me in as soon as he’s back and then I’ll be out of your hair.’

  What nonsense! ‘Do you normally attack your hostess with a knife?’

  ‘Well, no. I was not quite myself.’

  Bea brushed past him and into Oliver’s bedroom. She picked up the leather jacket and dived into the pockets. ‘Keys.’ She held them up for him to see.

  ‘Those keys are not … They’re from our family’s place in the country.’

  ‘Oh? There’s an IT geek downstairs, attending to the problem you imported into our system via your smartphone. If I ask him to check on the last call you received, would it be from someone in your office about going to Spain?’

  He looked away again. Resettled the towel over his shoulder. ‘I really don’t know how the Romans kept their togas in place. They didn’t use safety pins, did they?’

  Bea said, ‘Let me guess. You were asked to attend a certain meeting. The venue was changed at the last minute. You got there in good time, and then what happened?’

  He gaped like a goldfish.

  Lost all colour.

  Almost, he slid to the floor. At the last minute he clutched at the table. Bea pushed him into a chair and put the kettle on.

  So Orlando and Leon had both been lured somewhere and … whatever it was that had happened had sent them both fleeing for cover.

  She said, ‘You need tea. Strong. With sugar.’

  He recovered quickly enough and gasped out, ‘Sorry! Stupid of me. You haven’t seen the news this morning?’

  She gave him a sharp look. ‘You had the telly on to see …?’

  He nodded. His colour was returning. The towel had fallen off his shoulder again. He was well built enough to satisfy the eye, but his skin was so fair that he would have to avoid the sun.

  His hands shook as he accepted the mug of tea which Bea put in front of him. ‘Are you going to call the police?’

  The police? But … whatever it was that had happened, it involved Leon as well as this lad. ‘Not till I find out exactly what’s going on. Start at the beginning.’

  He turned the mug round and round. ‘Well, you’ll probably find it hard to believe, but I’ve never really got on with my father.’ He flicked a glance up at her, and she nodded, understanding exactly what he meant.

  She made herself a cuppa and sat opposite him. ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I won prizes at school for art and design, my father never congratulated me, though my mother did say she’d wanted to go to art school herself, only she got married instead. They did let me go to art school, but afterwards they wanted me to go into the family business, and there was a terrible row when I said it just wasn’t my scene. I found a job where I could be myself and a flat share, but still they thought that one day I’d “come round” to their way of life. I’m an only child, and they were both on at me to get married and produce grandchildren. They said I’d grow out of wanting to be with Charles – he’s my soulmate.’

  ‘And flatmate?’

  He nodded. ‘We were planning to make it legal, but when I told my father – this was about six months ago – he was livid. He had these plans, you see, for a dynastic marriage into the Holland family. To Dilys, now she’s been widowed. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s a sweet little thing. Somewhat silly, but I suppose if I’d been that way inclined, I’d have gone along with it.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Died, two years back. I miss her.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My father concocted this weird and wonderful plan. He’d set me up in a business of my own if I’d forget about Charles and see if I couldn’t make a go of it with Dilys. I’m hardly making ends meet at the moment, London is so expensive, so I had to take him seriously, though I really couldn’t see that it would ever work. So I asked how much and …’

  He shuddered. ‘It was a nice lump sum. Not by his standards, of course. He doesn’t think the same way as other people about money. He thinks I wouldn’t understand about playing the stock market, though I have dabbled a bit here and there, and not without success. But success on my terms is not what he considers success. If I think in terms of thousands, he thinks … thought … in millions. I bargained for a time limit. If Dilys refused me or made it clear she wouldn’t marry me, I’d still get the money. He said he’d give me six months. It was a good offer, but …’ He twisted in his seat. ‘I had to promise to try really hard to like Dilys that way. And I did try. Even he had to admit that I tried. I squired her here and there, and sent her flowers and helped her choose a new wardrobe and arranged for her to have her hair done at a decent place. It didn’t work. But then, I’d never really thought it would.’

  Bea felt cold anger at the way the men had been manipulating the girl. ‘Did it work for Dilys? Did she know about your bargain?’

  A shrug. ‘I don’t think she knew, but it didn’t work for her, either. A few weeks ago she broke down in tears and told me she knew that her father and mine were keen on the match, but that she didn’t think she could go through with it. She was dead scared of what her father would say when he found out. Asked me what she ought to do about it. I was so relieved, I can’t tell you. But I didn’t want to own up, either. The deal was for six months. I had to keep to the letter of the law or my father might refuse to honour the agreement to set me up in business. So I said we’d go on pretending for a while and that I’d think of something.’

  ‘You didn’t tell her you were gay?’

  ‘Sort of. Yes. I’m not sure she understood. You know what she’s like. Too naive to be true.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ His brow corrugated, and he looked anguished. A small child caught in adult machinations. ‘I think there was some sort of row between my father and old man Holland about money. My father said Mr Holland should contribute half of the money due to me, but Mr Holland wouldn’t play ball. Yesterday morning I had a text from my father saying he wanted me to meet him with this man Adamsson, who’s old man Holland’s chief accountant. The six months are nearly up, and I thought they were working out the nitty gritty of how I was going to get my money. I was a little surprised that they hadn’t waited till the very last day of the six months, but pleased. I can’t tell you! At last! I took a couple of calming pills and drove out there to meet them.’

  ‘Then you had a phone call …? Who from?’

  ‘It was another text message. From my father. Funny, that. I’d never known him text before, he always said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but there it was, in black and white. We were supposed to have met at the accountan
t’s house way out in the sticks, and I could understand he wouldn’t want us to meet at the office under old man Holland’s nose, because he was so picky about anyone selling any of his precious shares, wanting to know who’d bought and sold them, always checking the percentages, according to my father who’s known him since the Dark Ages. I think they were at school together, can you believe it?

  ‘Anyway, you’d think the chief accountant to Holland Holdings would have a big detached house with a double garage, or a penthouse flat somewhere exclusive, but apparently he’d never moved out of the house his parents bought when they got married half a century ago, though his mother’s dead now, and he lives there alone with his aged p. It’s a small three-bedroom house in a terrace overlooking a park in Ealing. Not exactly what you’d expect. I have a little car for work – there’s an underground garage at our flats – but while I was driving out there, I got this second text from my father saying the venue had been changed. We were to meet in a car park at the swimming pool about a mile further on. It’s a council-run swimming pool, modern, in some sort of park.

  ‘I got there a minute or two early. It wasn’t difficult to find the place, but I couldn’t see where we could meet and talk in private. The car park is a big one, divided into “bays” by hedges of evergreens which have grown up so much, you can’t really see through them. I parked in the first bay nearest the road.

  ‘It was early afternoon, before the schools came out. Pretty deserted. Hardly any other cars. There was a school bus parked on the other side of the swimming pool. A whole lot of kids were piling into that. The bus drove away as I walked along the bays, thinking it was a weird place to select for a meeting, because you couldn’t exactly sit in the back of a car and talk business, could you? Then I saw my father sitting in a car in the last bay, alone. I tapped on the door of his car and spoke his name. He didn’t move. Didn’t answer. I pulled the door open, and he fell sideways towards me. Oh, God. Am I going to be sick?’ He put both hands over his mouth and retched, but controlled himself.

  Bea poured a glass of cold water and handed it to him. ‘You mean he was dead?’

  A nod. He took the glass and drank. Licked his lips. ‘I touched his neck. He was still warm. But dead.’

  ‘Was the heater on in the car?’

  A wild look. ‘How should I know? I thought he’d had a heart attack at first, and then I saw the blood on his shirt. His overcoat was open and … I touched him, got blood on the cuff of my jacket. There was no knife that I could see. Maybe it was a gun?’

  ‘Really dead?’

  He nodded. Closed his eyes. Sipped some more water. ‘My stomach has always been delicate. I can’t keep anything down when I’m upset.’

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ said Bea, encouraging him. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I ran around the bay, yelling for help. There was one other car there. A woman was sitting in it by herself. I thought she’d just come out of the baths and was waiting to drive home. I went over to her, banged on her window. Her eyes were closed. Nice looking, fortyish. I wanted her to come with me over to my father, to help me to … I knew he was dead, really. Only, I wasn’t thinking straight. I shouted. She didn’t reply. I pulled her door open and touched her, and she … she didn’t move.’

  ‘What? She was dead, too? But how?’

  He wailed, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know! A knife, perhaps? They were both wearing dark clothing. I didn’t see any bullet holes or … I don’t know! I never liked him, I shouldn’t say that, should I, but I never wished him dead. I keep seeing him!’ He covered his own eyes with his hands.

  Bea tried to think. ‘You phoned the police?’

  ‘My first thought was to get help. There was no one else around, but I had the strangest feeling, shivers down my back. I tried my pockets and realized I’d left my phone in the car, at the other end of the car park. I started to run back there … and that’s when I spotted Leon walking towards me, looking around, just as I had done a few minutes before.’

  ‘You recognized him? You know him well?’

  ‘Not well. We don’t have much to do with one another. He swims in different waters.’

  Bea subdued a smile. Yes, he certainly did.

  Orlando said, ‘When I saw him, I realized how it would look, that he would assume I’d killed them, though why I should have done so, and who the woman was …’ He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I suppose she was killed because she saw my father being attacked, but perhaps it was the other way round. I don’t know. I don’t know!

  ‘I didn’t reason it out, but ducked into the shrubs. My heart was beating so fast, I thought he’d hear it, but he stopped, he was looking at something, I don’t know what. He got his phone out, but apparently there was no reply to his call. I prayed he’d go on down the bays, that he’d find the bodies and raise the alarm. I thought I could slip past him while he was looking the other way, but he legged it back the way he’d come. He’d arrived in a taxi which had taken its time turning round, and he shouted at the cab driver that he’d changed his mind and wanted to go on somewhere else. I don’t think he saw me. No, I’m sure he didn’t.’

  No, he hadn’t.

  Orlando rubbed his eyes. ‘I was terrified. I could see how it was going to look. I couldn’t understand how … how anything! And what about the woman? I’d never seen her before in my life. I wondered if she’d quarrelled with my father and … but why? And why there? While I was dithering, a car drove into the first bay and parked next to me. A woman disembarked a load of kids, and they all went off to the pool. I stayed where I was till they’d gone, then I got into my car and drove away, forgetting till I was way out of there that my fingerprints would be on the car doors. I didn’t dare go back. I couldn’t think what to do, or where to go. I’d been set up, hadn’t I? Leon, too, I shouldn’t wonder. I drove out to Denham, had a couple of drinks, and threw up. Then I rang Charles at work.’

  He sent her a sideways look. ‘Actually, Charles and I, we haven’t been getting on all that well. The arrangement about Dilys with my family had upset him. He said that if I’d really been serious about him, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. So when I rang him, told him what had happened, he wasn’t … I mean, it probably was good advice, but—’

  ‘He told you to ring the police?’

  ‘I couldn’t. But I couldn’t think what else to do. I thought if I could get to Spain, or South America … only, what would I do for money? If only I could lay my hands on my money and my passport! I had tucked away a couple of thousand here and there, but once the hunt was on, wouldn’t they freeze my accounts? Then I thought of Dilys, staying here. I thought she might get my money and my passport for me, if I gave her my keys to go in while Charles was at work. So I rang her, asked if she’d be by herself, and she said you were out. So I left the car near the end of the tube line and came in by Underground.’

  ‘Did you tell Dilys what had happened?’

  ‘Sort of. I left out about my relationship with Charles.’

  Dilys was standing in the doorway. ‘What was that about Charles? He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he? I’m not a complete idiot, you know. Did you really think I didn’t know what was going on between you two? You really ought to make up your mind whether you want a girl or a boy.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Orlando, hand to heart. ‘You gave me such a start. I didn’t realize you were there.’

  Dilys was frowning. ‘I’m glad you’ve told Mrs Abbot what happened. I know you swore me to secrecy, but I couldn’t sleep properly for worrying about it. I do realize you could be in trouble if the police knew you found the bodies, and I would like to help you, but honestly, I don’t think running away is the right thing to do.’

  She said to Bea, ‘I phoned round all the hospitals and Uncle Leon hasn’t been taken to any of them, so we ought to phone the police about him, too, don’t you think?’

  Bea thought this had gone on long enough. ‘He phoned me just now. He�
�s perfectly all right, spent the night with friends.’

  ‘Oh, right. Then one of the girls downstairs cut herself on some paper, and I found the Emergency Kit and dealt with it, I don’t think she needs to go to hospital, or anything. Keith said I’d done it beautifully. He’s nice, isn’t he? He asked if you wanted him to deal with Orlando’s smartphone, only of course he thinks it’s mine, and I said yes, please. And there’s someone who keeps calling on your private landline, and Carrie keeps telling them he’s got the wrong number but he keeps ringing back, and Carrie said I’d better tell you in case it’s some stalker or other and you’ll need to get the police on to it.’

  Bea felt a cold shiver run down her back. ‘What number does he think he’s calling?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Dilys checked that the drier had finished its cycle, pulled Orlando’s clothes out, and tossed them to him. ‘Do you want me to iron your shirt?’ And, without waiting for his reply, got out the steam iron and ironing board.

  Bea got to her feet. ‘Orlando, she’s right. I’m going down to make a couple of phone calls now. I know someone in the police force who will give you a fair hearing, and I’ll see if I can get hold of him. All right? Promise me you won’t try to run away.’

  He looked strained, almost grey. ‘They’ll crucify me.’

  ‘This policeman will be hard on you for not reporting what you saw, but he doesn’t go in for torture.’

  Down the stairs she went, making a diversion into the kitchen to have a quick look at the morning paper, which she’d started to read over the breakfast she hadn’t had. Yes, here it was.

  ‘Mystery deaths in a car park … two schoolchildren were horrified to discover the bodies of … identified as Lord Lethbury, 63, found sitting in his Mercedes, with a bullet wound … and Mrs Margrete Walford, 48, soon to be ex-wife of Sir Ben Walford, whose current bitter divorce case, with allegations of … ’

  The landline rang, and Bea picked it up. Leon’s voice. ‘What number are you?’

  Bea’s dead husband’s birthday had been on the twenty-ninth of November. She said, ‘Twenty-nine eleven. You’ve seen the papers?’