by EJ Lamprey
‘Marjorie for me again, Megan? You know I can’t stand her! I spoke to Harriet earlier, she was going to give me Parker and you’ve put him against Vivian. I know she doesn’t care for him, can’t he do for me instead?’
‘Parker’s agreed to come back, so we’re slotting him in with his old units where we can.’ Megan said patiently. ‘Anyway, Edge, not me who makes the decisions. Harriet drew this up while you were all out shopping and she’s not here this afternoon. You can take it up with her on Monday.’
‘She’s determined to leave me with Marjorie,’ Edge said crossly ‘I must have asked her twenty times. Is Hamish here? I’ll take it up with him.’
‘Hamish? He is, but it’s got nothing to do with him, he has no contact with the cleaners.’
‘Oh, but—oh.’ Edge looked narrowly at Megan. ‘Nothing to do with them?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘I need to see him. Right away.’ Edge turned on her heel, oblivious to the irritated look Megan threw at her back, and took to the stairs up to the administration floor. Hamish was, as always, delighted to see her.
‘Helen Webster.’ Edge said breathlessly. ‘You said you knew her quite well?’
‘I wouldn’t say quite well’ Hamish said defensively, ‘but yes, she was in quite often. She had a box here.’
‘I thought only residents had boxes?’ Edge put a hand to her chest. The in-house exercise classes three times a week kept her fit, but running up a flight of stairs wasn’t her usual modus operandi and her lungs were complaining furiously.
‘Well, of course. But Helen was in a difficult situation, I believe she was living with a bit of a deadbeat who stole from her. She asked, and we had a box free, so I didn’t see the harm, and that way she could keep her tips safe without having to bank them. I didn’t see any harm in it.’ Hamish repeated and Edge sat down abruptly.
‘Hamish, you have to open that box. I know you’ve got keys, and if there’s just money in there you’ll need me as a witness, and if there’s anything else we can phone the police. But there are all sorts of questions about Helen and that box could have some of the answers. It could even give us a lead to who killed Betsy, but Hamish, if I’m right, there’s going to be a lot of bad news in there. Bad for Grasshopper Lawns, I mean. We have to look at it before the police do.’
It took a lot more persuasion but finally Hamish gave in and they went into the strongroom. He lifted down a box, unlocked it and gently shook the contents out onto the table.
‘The missing buzzer!’ Edge reached for it but Hamish caught her hand urgently.
‘No fingerprints, Edge! In fact, we should both be wearing latex gloves, I’ve got some of the Frail Care ones somewhere—here, put these on. Why is one of the apartment buzzers here? You knew about this?’
‘I knew a buzzer was missing from Mose’s apartment, the police will definitely have to see this. And look, here’s a computer printout about Josie.’
‘Nothing there we don’t know.’ Hamish creased his eyes as he read the article quickly.
‘Nothing there we don’t know now.’ Edge corrected him absently. ‘Yuk, look at these—’ she fanned out some well-creased photographs of two masked men wrestling—or not—in bizarre leather and bondage clothing and Hamish actually recoiled slightly.
‘Oh dear,’ he said blankly. ‘What does it mean?’
‘That’s what I was trying to tell you,’ Edge said impatiently, attempting to sift the small pile of papers and banknotes without touching them even with her gloved fingers, ‘she was blackmailing people. She tried it on Josie who, good for her, called her bluff and spilt the beans herself. Someone is paying her to keep those photos quiet. And to judge by this, Hamish, they’re paying quite a lot. There’s the best part of two thousand pounds here.’ She nudged aside some rolled notes and made a little noise in her throat. ‘I’m absolutely psychic, I said child pornography, and look, this is an article about some bloke being arrested for a huge collection of child pornography. I don’t recognize the name and there’s no photo. But it will be someone here, for sure.’
‘But who?’ Hamish stepped slightly back from the table, looking appalled. ‘We’ll have to give it all to the polis. The scandal—the scandal will pretty much wreck the place. You know that.’
‘Which is why I wanted us to look at it first.’ Edge reminded him patiently. ‘We’ll leave the buzzer. And the banknotes, and the story on Josie. We suppress the rest.’
‘Child pornography.’ Hamish shook his head. ‘We’re not protecting anyone from being prosecuted for that.’
‘It’s an old article.’ Edge nudged the printout gently so she could read it. ‘Look at the date, twenty years ago. He’s not necessarily still collecting it. Not as if Josie is still a madam, after all. But that’s the kind of stigma he couldn’t face down the way she did. I’m guessing Helen found something in his apartment to suggest he had another name, Googled it, and came up with this. We can quietly tip off the police to keep an eye on him and make sure he’s keeping his nose clean.’
‘But we don’t know who it is?’ Hamish was calming down slightly and she shrugged.
‘We can find out easily enough. Helen had an apartment every day to do. I’d guess it wasn’t Mose. She got her money from him a different way, so he’s out. And trust me, so is Vivian, there’s nothing here that could relate to her. So we just need to find out who her other three were. Like I said, that could also lead us straight to who killed Betsy.’
‘Depends how far back we have to go.’ Hamish bent again over the photographs, his nostrils still pinched with disgust. ‘Think on, it’s a good two years ago she was doing Josie’s place, and here’s the story on Josie. We’ll have to check back. To think that one of the men here, men I’ve had drinks with and watched the Old Firm with, could do this sort of thing—michty me.’
Edge picked up a paperknife and used it to flip the buzzer over. The cover had been taken off, exposing three wires. ‘Do you know anything about these, Hamish?’
‘Yes, a bit.’ He took the paperknife from her and pointed. ‘The double one, that’s the power one. That one’s connected direct to the duty desk, and that one to Matron’s pager. Out of hours the duty one buzzes through to Harriet’s pager, but—that’s odd—’ he prodded gently with the tip of the knife and the wire bent obediently under the pressure. ‘The green one is always connected to the duty desk, but this one’s disconnected. Look. It looks connected, but it’s actually loose, just touching. So the only signal would have been to Matron’s pager. He died around eight in the morning, didn’t he? She’s very careful, I know she is, about keeping her pager with her but if she was having a shower, and thinking the duty desk would be alerted to any emergency—oh dear, oh dear. Oh, this is bad.’
‘Talk me through how it works?’ Edge asked insistently and Hamish drew on one of the post-its lying on the table.
‘It’s supposed to be a fail-safe system. Very, very expensive. When a buzzer, any buzzer, is pressed, an alert goes direct to the duty desk,’ he drew a line and sketched in a tiny old-fashioned phone ringing off the hook, ’and at the same time the apartment number flashes up on Matron’s pager.’ Another line, and a little pendant necklace. ‘Megan—or, if it is out of hours, Harriet—picks up the phone and calls the apartment. If all is well, she presses a button on her phone which cancels the alert on Matron’s pager. If all is not well, she presses another button which turns the flashing digits to red, and makes the pager buzz.’ Two more lines on his sketch, the danger one suitably jagged. ‘If nobody calls the apartment—which is what happened here, of course, because the buzzer was disconnected—the pager doesn’t get cancelled and the flashing turns red by itself after two minutes. After another minute, it starts to buzz, getting louder and louder.’
‘For how long?’ Edge pressed. ‘I mean, using your example that Matron might have been in the shower. Does it eventually switch off?’
‘Well, yes. But look.’ He touched the red wire del
icately with the paperknife and it slid sideways. ‘It’s broken. The green one was loose, so even if poor Mose had reached it I’m not surprised it didn’t work, but the red one is actually broken. That’s really not supposed to happen, that’s why I said it was very bad.’
‘I doubt it was an accident, to be honest with you. Just the fact that it’s in this box makes me doubt that. The police can find out what happened but what, Hamish, are we going to do about the porn?’ She bent her gaze on him and he shook his head.
‘My dear Edge, don’t look at me like that. We had absolutely no right to look in this box before calling the polis and I’m sorry, but it isn’t our place to take anything out. All we can do is ask them to be as discreet as possible. At least we do know the worst and it’s up to them to join up the dots and find out who she’s been blackmailing.’
Edge sighed inwardly, but rested her hand briefly on his arm. ‘I do agree, Hamish, and I think you’re being very wise. I suppose we’d better phone the police now. But it seems even odder, now that we’ve seen the box, that Helen should have bolted without collecting her cash first. Two thousand pounds is a lot of running-away money to leave behind.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sunday – new tenant in number 10
Edge stirred her coffee, staring out the window at the swirling snow. It hadn’t yet stopped since the first flakes the afternoon before, and seemed to be getting heavier all the time. She watched the minibus lumbering through the main gate in the distance, still capped with a neat crown of snow as it left on the church run for the devout few who weren’t about to let a little bad weather stop them taking early communion. Scotland was definitely reverting to the climate of her childhood, although this time round she was less inclined to wrap up warmly and go out to catch flakes on her tongue. She did open one of the glass doors to her tiny verandah to see whether her morning ritual of sitting outside was an option, and a flurry of snowflakes danced past her to die damply in the warmth. Maybe not. She wandered through the small apartment to her utility door, which opened to the covered walkway, and was instantly intrigued by the sounds of bustle and male voices. Early on a Sunday morning it may be, but the new tenant, it seemed, was moving into Mose’s old apartment, two along from hers.
She watched with interest as a series of boxes and bubble-wrapped furniture was carried up the walkway and into the apartment. There were two burly men, obviously the movers, but she was shortly rewarded with a sight of the new occupant and frowned slightly. A tall, slim, grey man—grey hair, grey skin, a charcoal grey overcoat, who looked like a clerk and not at all interesting—came out to confer over the manipulation of a particularly ungainly item in bubble wrap which was quite obviously not going to fit through the door.
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’ Harriet said impatiently at her elbow and Edge nearly dropped her coffee with shock. ‘Edge, dear, hold onto Buster for me will you, while I get this sorted out?’ Edge automatically took the lead as Harriet marched forward to direct the men through the closest service corridor to the garden side, then came bustling back. ‘I’m sorry about that, but really it was just as well I was here or I think they’d have broken both the door and the piano. Men are so stubborn, they don’t think around problems the way we do. Now, I wanted to ask if you can take Buster for a few days? Vivian said he’d be happier with you than going into one of the kennels but if it’s a problem just say the word.’
‘Of course not, I like Buster.’ Edge said automatically. ‘What’s wrong with Vivian?’
‘Well, you heard her yesterday, her bronchitis is back, and quite bad.’ Harriet said briskly ‘She coughed all night, apparently, and Matron wants her in Frail Care under her eye. She’s moved there already—Edge, do you mind if we pop through your flat and watch the movers going in to make sure they don’t damage anything?’
‘Come in, come in—’ Edge stepped back and Buster hurried in, heading unerringly for the dog bed she had bought at the Christmas market. Harriet unclipped his lead and strode to the verandah doors while Edge cast one last look at the heap of boxes stacked under the covered walkway and closed the utility door. A piano? Maybe not a clerk, then.
The snow obligingly paused as the piano was carried along the grassed path fronting the apartments and, under Harriet’s eagle eye, was borne triumphantly over the verandah railing and through the glass doors. Edge, not sure whether Harriet would be coming back, perched on her Havana chair and stared absently out at the snow-dusted garden and her own hedge quarter, which was looking very wintry and neglected, the faded stems of begonias set at forlorn angles and only a tangle of wizened stems where her geraniums had rioted in the summer. The hedge quarters were greatly prized—hedges crossing each other in X shapes at intervals around the perimeter of the main lawn, providing not only screening from the garden but also each creating four miniature semi-private garden patios. Edge’s had a bench, a bird-feeder and a birdbath, a few ancient flagstones brought from her last garden, and a profusion of herbs and bulbs; in summer it was charming. At the moment it looked—Harriet’s return broke her chain of thought and she rose to offer her coffee.
‘No thank you.’ Harriet said briskly. ‘I must get back to the house and check we’re all sorted for this weather—you’ve heard the forecast, I’m sure, snow for at least a week? We’ll be snowed in for certain. Mr MacDonald is getting in just in time, it would have been a real problem if he’d been planning to move even a day later, I think.’
‘He looks like an actuary.’ Edge said critically and Harriet’s rather heavy features lit with a sudden gleam of laughter.
‘He doesn’t act like one,’ she said placidly enough. ‘He’s a well-known set designer and choreographer. Donald MacDonald? Quite a character. I must be away, you introduce yourself when he’s settled in, you should get on rather well. Thank you so much for taking Buster, Vivian will be very relieved to know he’s safe with you.’
She left with a quick wave, picking her way with some care along the grassed path, which could be slippery in winter—a grid sunk into the grass protected the lawn from being worn down by the passage of feet through the year, but could be treacherous when the grass was wet, or, as it was now, under a thin dusting of snow. Edge stayed where she was, as the snow hadn’t yet resumed its assault, and finished her cooling coffee. A dainty pale whippet appeared, nosed around her triangle of garden, and then relieved itself on one of her flagstones and she waited for the mysterious Donald MacDonald to clean up behind his pet. Nothing. She stood up again and peered along to his apartment just as he appeared and called to the whippet, which danced toward him obediently. Man and dog turned back to the apartment and she called out involuntarily. Both stopped and looked toward her and she gestured with her cup towards her fouled garden.
‘Good morning,’ she smiled. ‘I don’t know if you noticed but your dog—?’
‘Yes?’ Frosty blue eyes met hers across the few yards separating them and she waved the cup vaguely again.
‘Your dog messed?’
He turned to stare at the hedge garden, then turned back to face her. ‘My dear lady,’ he said coolly, ‘I’ve just moved in. I don’t think the world will come to an end because of one jobbie, do you?’ and with that he turned on his heel and was gone, the little whippet whisking ahead of him.
‘Charming,’ Edge, suddenly furious, told the space where he had been. She still had two of the bio-degradable doggy bags she’d taken the day before to clean up behind Buster and stalked over to the hedge garden to do the honours, dropping the revoltingly warm and soft little parcel into one of the doggy bins half-concealed at the end of the hedge arms. Her dignified stalk back to the apartment was marred by a skid on the wet grass but it seemed no one was looking out anyway and she made it safely back into the apartment to tell Buster, who greeted her with a subdued thump of his tail, that Some People had no consideration whatsoever. And, resignedly, that she was turning into one of those old biddies who got into rages over nothing and talked to their animals.
She was still out of sorts when she left Buster in one of the kennel runs outside the house and went in for the cooked breakfast, a little later than usual, and was even more annoyed to find her favourite Sunday newspaper had been claimed by someone else in her absence. There was still a choice of three left on the table and she scooped one up at random on her way into the breakfast room.
Breakfast was her favourite meal of the day and she cheered up as she browsed through the chafing dishes, choosing kippers with a poached egg, grapefruit juice and a croissant left over from the earlier continental breakfast session. As an afterthought she added a pork sausage, planning to pop it into her bag for Buster to make up for having to wait in the kennel run. Vivian never took the breakfast option, preferring to make her own and come into the house for lunch, and his routine was being completely overturned today. Her favourite table, tucked into the corner, had been claimed by two hard-talking women and on an impulse she went through into the conservatory.
It was normally a little too bright for her in the mornings but today was pearly grey, a dusting of snow on the glassed roof further diffusing what light there was. She was the only one there and with a sigh of satisfaction made herself at home at a table under a rather magnificent potted Torbay palm to enjoy her meal and catch up on the headlines of the day.
She was deep in the tribulations of the English cricket team, which was getting trounced in South Africa, when someone approached her table, and looked up with an unwelcoming frown. One of the few advantages of being single was the luxury of a silent breakfast and the frown deepened when she realized the newcomer was Donald MacDonald. He half-turned to put his tray down on the next table and turned back, his startlingly blue eyes no less frosty than they had been earlier. Seen close up, he was better-looking than she had realized, with excellent bone structure under a much-faded tan.
‘I just wanted to apologize about Odette earlier,’ he said abruptly. ‘By the time I’d found a bag and gone out you’d already cleared up. Thank you.’
