A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  ‘Depends what you’ve heard.’

  ‘You’ve brought in a witness to the Munro killing?’

  ‘Not quite to the killing, not quite as good as that.’

  ‘To the grab, was it? Still’ He made a triumphal fist and fixed me with a beady eye.

  ‘Long way to courts though, Dave. Long way to proving anything.’

  ‘But at least we’ve got Ronnie back in our sights!’

  ‘Ronnie Buck still happens to be a client of my firm, I should remind you.’

  ‘Ah.’ Dave gave me an ironic smile. ‘But the driver, Russell? Not one of yours?’

  ‘He’s represented by a firm in Catford somewhere, so I believe.’

  ‘Bad luck for him.’

  ‘It would be unprofessional of me to comment on that,’ I said, deliberately choosing to misunderstand him.

  ‘They tortured him firsts you know.’

  I stared at him. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Ugly stuff. Poor blighter.’

  I decided not to tell Sturgess about this quite yet. He was feeling guilty enough already.

  ‘It’s got Buck written all over it.’

  ‘I hope you get him.’ I said, giving up all attempts at lawyer-client detachment.

  ‘We’ll give it a bloody good try.’

  We fell silent as some officers walked past.

  On a lighter note, I asked ingenuously, ‘Am I in your good books again, then?’

  His smile was conditional.

  ‘Enough to ask a favour?’

  His expression became both wary and attentive. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘There’s a flat in Hans Place, Knightsbridge, owned by one of those private trusts based in Guernsey. The trust’s controlled by a family called Aubrey. But I need to know who lives there, who actually uses the place.’

  Dave pulled a questioning face. This was such simple stuff that he was looking for the catch.

  ‘I’ve even got the phone number.’

  He raised his palms. ‘That’s it? Just who lives there?’

  ‘Or uses it regularly.’

  ‘Knightsbridge…Not someone who’s likely to be known to us, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not someone who might be known to Special Branch?’ he said, going through the danger points.

  ‘Very unlikely.’

  ‘Not a diplomat or enemy alien?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tomorrow okay? I’m on duty till late tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow’ll be fine.’

  He made a fist again. ‘Know something? I’m only ever truly happy when we’re going after Buck.’

  ‘I’m meant to let him know the moment you arrive,’ Corinthia announced in a purposeful tone, jerking her head towards Paul’s office.

  It was after five thirty; the rest of the staff had gone home. In a voice that wouldn’t carry, I asked, ‘Anything for me?’

  Corinthia glanced towards the table where the immediate-action files were kept. ‘Plenty for you, but it’s all been dealt with.’ She had her cool voice on, and I knew it was because I had kept her in the dark about the day’s events.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said with suitable humility.

  ‘DI Ramsey from Norfolk CID called to say he’d like to see Mr Will Dearden tomorrow morning at ten. At the Dearden home. If that’s okay.’

  ‘Tell him that’s okay.’

  ‘You’re going back there?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Returning?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Saying this, I realized that I had taken the decision to stay on in Norfolk until after the weekend. ‘Sunday night?’

  ‘Rights’ said Corinthia, already planning the logistics. ‘And Gary?’

  ‘He’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Aha.’ Now she was openly curious.

  ‘We had to go and sort something out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  A door opened and footsteps sounded in the passage. It could only be Paul.

  I said quickly in the same low voice, ‘Can’t talk about it. Not allowed to.’

  Corinthia’s expression lifted; she liked a bit of intrigue. ‘A security thing?’

  She was near enough. ‘Yes. Not a word, Corinthia. Not even to Paul.’

  ‘Right.’ She gave me an old-fashioned look, all pride and discretion.

  Paul appeared in the doorway, looking rumpled in shirtsleeves. ‘You’re here,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Just a minute ago.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ His lids drooped darkly, his stare contained a childish rebuke.

  ‘Goodnight, Corinthia.’ Waving to her, I led the way down the passage to Paul’s office.

  ‘Why didn’t you call?’ he said, at my shoulder. ‘I’ve had one hell of a day, what with this Munro thing. One hell of a day. You heard?’

  ‘I heard. Where was he found?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere near Lewisham.’ He followed me into the room.

  ‘How did he die?’

  He pushed some papers across his desk to clear some space. ‘Shot, they said.’ As he perched side-saddle on the desk the weight he’d put on during the last year showed in the bulge of his stomach, the tightness of his belt. His shirt was terribly crumpled and I realized he must have taken it straight from the ironing basket this morning rather than come into the bedroom and risk a conversation.

  I went back to the door and closed it. ‘An execution, was it, then? A gangland affair?’

  He waved a hand, he averted his gaze. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘They must know by now.’

  ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘Did he know he was a marked man?’

  ‘Eh? What?’ He put on a show of incomprehension, but I could see that he was giving himself time to thinks to unscramble his brain from the lunch-time drinking session, and in that moment I felt a wild mindless rage at his weakness, at the fatal flaw that had led him to this pass. ‘What?’ he repeated absentmindedly. ‘Know? Oh, well—he muttered something, you know, about being on the wrong side of someone, of worrying about the sort of treatment he might get when he came out. But they’re all in trouble, aren’t they, the Munros of this world? I didn’t take it too seriously. Especially when we said we were going for bail and he didn’t object, didn’t instruct us otherwise. I mean, he didn’t say not to. You know?’ All this was delivered at breakneck speedy as though to discourage interruption.

  ‘Which gang did he belong to?’

  Paul affected the expression of exaggerated innocence that always told me when he was about to lie. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Someone said it was Ronnie Buck’s.’

  An expansive shrug this time. ‘Listen, I never asked. Safer that way, you know?’

  ‘But you must have realized.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he flared defensively. ‘Why should I have realized? Since when was it a good idea to know something like that?’

  My anger rose steadily. ‘Oh, come on, Paul. Don’t tell me Munro was paying his own legal fees.’

  Paul’s expression became indignant. ‘He was on legal aid. He was always on legal aid! What are you getting at, Lexxy? What are you trying to say here exactly?’

  I sat down heavily in a visitor’s chair. ‘I was just asking.’

  But I must have sounded unconvincing because he protested furiously, ‘No, you’re saying something here. You’re saying something that I take exception to!’

  The phone rang. Glaring at me, he ignored it for a while until, with a gesture of remembering something important, he swept it up and conferred with the barrister on a blackmail case listed for the Old Bailey in the morning.

  When he rang off he was more subdued. Eyeing me circumspectly, he said, ‘So where’ve you been all day?’

  ‘Something came up.’

  ‘With Gary?’

  For an uneasy moment I thought he might know. ‘Gary came along with me, yes.’

  ‘So?’ he demanded. ‘What was it?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it
, I’m afraid.’

  His mouth gave a twitch. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not free to talk about it.’

  He affected a laboured expression of amazement. ‘Not free to talk about it? What does that mean, Lexxy?’

  ‘I can’t discuss it on professional grounds.’ I couldn’t prevent myself adding, ‘Nor on ethical grounds, for that matter.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on!’ He reached out a hand, as if to stop this foolishness before it went any further. ‘Professional grounds? Well, I’d like to hear why. I mean, I think I’m entitled to hear the why, aren’t I? And ethical? For Christ’s sake, Lexxy, what does that mean? Ethical?’

  ‘Professionally, it’s simply that we have a conflict of interests, nothing more.’

  ‘But who’s your client? At least I can know who your client is, can’t I?’

  ‘It wouldn’t actually be in my client’s interests for anyone to know who he—or she—is.’

  He froze a little, his eyes took on an injured look. ‘Not in your client’s interest even for me to know?’

  ‘Even you.’

  His mouth worked furiously, he controlled himself with difficulty. ‘Okay,’ he said with a supreme effort at patience. ‘Okay. Let’s move on, then, to this ethical business. Why wouldn’t it be ethical to talk about it, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I can’t answer that.’

  He clutched a hand to his forehead in a theatrical gesture of impending madness. ‘You can’t answer.’

  ‘My client needs anonymity as a first priority.’

  ‘Anonymity I understand all right,’ he said in an aggrieved tone, ‘but I didn’t think it applied to us, you know? I thought we could tell each other anything.’

  ‘Not in this case. I’ve promised. I’ve given my word.’

  Behind his spectacles, his eyes glinted with suspicion. ‘This is nothing to do with Munro, is it?’

  I felt no compunction about lying, not with Sturgess’s safety on my conscience. ‘No,’ I said, calmly holding his gaze. ‘But, Paul, I don’t want to get into guessing games on this.’

  ‘Ronnie Buck—it’s something to do with him, then?’

  I stood up. ‘No guessing games, Paul.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, backing down instantly with a lift of troth hands. ‘Fine.’ He was breathing heavily, a rivulet of sweat glistened on his cheek. I said, ‘Go home. Get some rest.’ He pulled off his spectacles to rub his eyes. ‘You’re not coming home, then?’

  ‘I’ll be away till Sunday nighty maybe Monday.’

  ‘Norfolk?’ He made a feeble attempt at lightness: ‘Can’t compete with Norfolk.’

  It was like a goad, this pull on my emotions. I felt a pang of responsibility and guilt. I said, ‘Try not to drink tonight.’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Oh, sure, sure.’ He didn’t make any promises, I noticed. We had passed the point where we felt we had to spare each other’s feelings.

  The lift had the aura of the Arab palace, with pewter mirrors artificially distressed with gold veining, a marble floor and a brightly gilded control panel. In the fourth floor passageway there was an ornate carpet patterned in a quasi-eastern design, a series of fancy chandeliers and mock-Louis-XVI side tables with extravagant flower arrangements in gilt-encrusted vases. The apartment door had an elaborate gilt knocker and a bell set in a gilt shell. I chose the bell.

  Barry Holland opened the door in the sort of suit you see media stars wearing in press photographs, dark and casual and beautifully cut, worn with a simple white open-necked shirt and slicked-back hair. This look—the international promoter, the metropolitan man-about-town—fitted him much more easily than the country squire.

  ‘Come in.’ He stood back to reveal a hall with yet more distressed mirrors and marble and chandeliers and flowers, as though the designer from the passageway had been let loose in here too.

  The living room was large and dimly lit. I walked across an uncluttered space to wide windows and looked out over Regent’s Park. Above the dark canopy of trees the lights of the city were bright against a troubled sky. Below, headlights chased each other around the Outer Circle, and through the first rank of trees a light reflected darkly off the canal.

  ‘A drink? I’ve some champagne open.’

  I asked for water. On his way out of the room Barry turned on another light and I saw a room furnished in much simpler style than the hall, with minimalist armless sofas, low transparent plastic tables and splashy modern pictures. The walls were white, the carpet smoky blue. Tall wafer-thin speakers stood in each corner, emitting what I would have called mood music.

  I sat on a sofa facing what had once been a fireplace and now contained a large bronze of a dolphin. Barry brought the drinks and sank onto an adjacent sofa facing the windows. Here in his own surroundings, sipping champagne, he possessed the polish and confidence and sense of power of the self-made man with serious money.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ He asked it pleasantly though with a suggestion of reserve.

  ‘Basically, I’m trying to fill in some of the gaps in Grace’s diary—’

  ‘Haven’t the police done that already?’ he argued mildly.

  ‘Possibly. But it’s always best to be sure about these things.’

  He asked, with the same air of polite enquiry, ‘You think they might have missed something?’

  ‘It’s always possible.’

  ‘And what might they have missed?’ If he had intended to take charge of the conversation, he was succeeding effortlessly.

  ‘Well, that’s the point—you can never be sure.’

  ‘But what are you looking for?’ He tempered the question with a faint smile. ‘You must have some idea of what you’re looking for.’ For all his politeness, there was a quiet relentlessness to his tone, and I couldn’t make out if it was a habit of his, to get the answers he wanted, or whether he had reserved this approach specifically for me.

  ‘It’s really to eliminate everything that isn’t relevant.’

  He studied this idea with interest. ‘Aha.’

  I felt bound to explain, ‘The family simply want to know everything there is to know. There’s nothing on cause of death yet, you see.

  It’s all a mystery.’

  ‘The family?’ This seemed to puzzle him. I thought you were acting for Will Dearden.’

  ‘Will and the family.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ahh.’ Fixing me with indolent eyes that missed very little, he continued smoothly, ‘So you’re filling in the gaps.’

  ‘There was an entry in Grace’s diary for the Thursday after she disappeared. A six thirty meeting at this address.’

  ‘That’s right, but we cancelled it.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘Because I was going to be in Deepwell the previous day and it seemed easier to meet there.’

  ‘And did you meet in Deepwell?’

  ‘We were going to fix something for the Friday when she was back from London, but by then, of course…’ this gesture suggested unfortunate events. ‘So—no, we didn’t meet.’

  ‘May I ask what you were meeting about?’

  Taking a sip of champagne, he observed me over the rim of his glass and when he spoke again it was with the air of someone who has decided to be a little more forthcoming. ‘We were meeting about the music festival. My company were—are—putting up some sponsorship money. Five thousand pounds, to be exact. Grace and I had a few details to discuss. The billing, the advertising, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see.’ I made a show of taking this in. ‘And who is AWP?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Grace had put the initials AWP against the appointment. Above this address.’

  ‘AWP?’ He pulled his mouth down. ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘There was no one else due to come to the meeting?’

  ‘No.’ He was still very sure, then a glimmer of realization crept into his face. ‘Unless…’ Dropping his head briefly, he smiled to himself. ‘It just could h
ave been Grace’s sense of humour at work. It could have been the nickname she used on me a couple of times.’ He smiled again. ‘She used to call me Amazingly Wealthy Person. To my face. She had a way of doing that, of being right up-front. She was a bit wicked that way. Yes,’ he mused, ‘that would be it. Amazingly Wealthy Person.’

  ‘You’d had meetings before?’

  ‘What, on the festival? Yeah. Two or three.’

  ‘Here?’

  His eyes narrowed, his expression contained a mild warning, as though I were straying into matters that were really none of my business, and I wondered why he should be so defensive—or protective—on the subject of Grace.

  ‘We met in Deepwell once,’ he replied. ‘And once at my company offices. And once here.’

  ‘Otherwise, you knew Grace and Will socially?’

  ‘I saw them a bit, yes. But not that often. I like to be a bit of a hermit in Norfolk. Go there for a quiet time. Not too mad about the socializing.’ And touchy about his status, I would have guessed, sensitive about the doors that might be closed to him because of his background. ‘When did you last see Grace, then?’ There was an abrupt pause, a moment of appraisal, while Barry tried to work out if I knew he was the key witness to Grace’s baffling last journey, that he was the one who’d seen her returning to the marshes. I amended, ‘I meant, last see her to talk to.’

  ‘To talk to.’ He thought back. ‘It must have been three weeks ago, I suppose.’

  ‘And she seemed all right? Normal?’

  ‘Normal?’ For some reason this question made him frown. ‘Well, she was on sparkling form, no problem about that.’ Sparkling form.

  Impulsively I sat forward. ‘Tell me about her, Barry. Tell me what she was really like.’

  ‘Really like? Blimey, there’s a question. A bit of a mystery, really, like most women. Bit of an unknown quantity.’ He slid me a mischievous look. ‘Known quite a few women in my time, but can’t pretend I ever got as far as understanding them.’ He chuckled contentedly, a man who still relished the challenge. ‘Really like?’ he echoed. For a while I thought he was going to palm me off with something superficial, but he took his time, he considered his answer carefully. ‘She was a funny old mixture, all sweetness and light on the outside, but tough on the inside. You know what I mean? Confident and clever. Not bright, exactly, but…yes, clever. And very together. Organized, efficient. In fact’—he narrowed his eyes—‘a bit obsessive, if you know what I mean. The details she wanted to pin down—like what sort of guests I’d be bringing to this festival, what sort of clothes they’d be wearing…Nothing was left to chance. Of course, she was a really classy dresser herself. Always looked great. Great.’ He gazed past me while he pulled more thoughts out of the air. ‘Beyond that…ambitious, definitely. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Nothing wrong with a bit of ambition.’ He raised his eyebrows to show that ambition certainly hadn’t done him any harm. ‘Wanted things from life. Knew where she was going. Very…’ He considered the word. ‘…shrewd. Yes, and strong. Used to getting her own way, you know? Used to getting what she wanted.’ He added under his breath, ‘Though she didn’t always pull it off, so they say.’