Bloody Roses

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘She wanted to ask your advice about a letter she had had … she probably called it “worrying” or “upsetting”. In your panic, you assumed that the letter was about your part in the fraud.’

  ‘You really are a romancer, aren’t you?’ Certes’s voice was as light and easy as usual, but between his parted lips Willow could see his teeth clenched. Sweat glistened on his upper lip, catching the light like sequins on a dress.

  He moved forward again, with his right hand still in his jacket pocket. Willow moved back until her way was blocked by the concrete wall. Its hardness make her whole body jerk as she hit it.

  ‘You’ve been wary of her, haven’t you, ever since you discovered that she had worked in your great-aunt’s tax office at the time of the fraud?’ she said, determined to regain control of their dialogue. ‘I wonder when you actually began to get frightened by Sarah’s jokes about making you do things for her because of what she knew about you. They must have started to niggle and then bothered you more and more until you were convinced she knew who you were. And then came the day when she told the story of the fraud in front of you.’

  Willow smiled and slowly shook her head.

  ‘I’m not surprised you flipped. You must have thought that she was about to start putting the screws on seriously.’

  ‘You’re talking total crap, fit only for a woman who writes sentimental rubbish,’ said Certes, standing about three feet away from her. ‘I don’t suppose you even understand the words you use.’

  ‘Did she summon you to her office that night?’ said Willow and, when there was no answer, supplied her own: ‘No. She was too conscientious ever to give you the number of the doors, even though Tracy wasn’t.’

  Something in his face told Willow that her supposition about Tracy’s indiscretions had been correct.

  ‘Sarah must have asked to see you urgently because of her letter and you assumed that it had to do with the fraud. My God! You must have been in hell all these years, thinking she knew and wondering how long she’d tease you with it and make you work for her before she reported you to the Law Society. How you must have hated her!’

  Certes’s face did change then. Shocked that its delicacy could express such viciousness, Willow tried to back, pushing herself painfully into the concrete.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘The chief executive is expecting me.’

  ‘I don’t think you ought to go anywhere until you have told me what all this nonsense is about.’ Certes took another step towards her and gripped her left arm with his right hand.

  ‘Let go of me,’ said Willow icily.

  ‘Tell me what you mean,’ he said.

  Willow twisted her arm and pulled, but she discovered with an unpleasant shock that for all his smallness he was much stronger than she and she could not free herself. Relaxing her muscles, she felt a corresponding lessening of his grip, although he did not let go. She told herself that there was no need to be afraid of him. The car-park attendant’s kiosk was not far away, even if it was out of sight, and Certes would hardly risk killing her with a witness so close.

  ‘All right, I’ll spell it out,’ she said, trying to breathe normally. It seemed important not to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was afraid. ‘I think that it was you, as a law student, who found the answer to the Bicklington-Heath problem; you who knew that no death certificate is required to obtain probate. Your uncle – or whoever the unfortunate man was – took all the blame when the scam went wrong. Did he kill himself, or did you help him along?’

  As she said that. Willow realized that she had gone too far. The grip on her wrist was released but before she could move or call out, Certes’s knee was between her legs, his right hand jammed against her mouth, forcing her head against the wall. His body pressed against hers in a terrifying parody of the act of love. Choking, trying to get enough of a grip on the flesh of his hand to bite it, Willow brought both hands up behind his head, wound them in his short hair and pulled with all her strength.

  ‘Bitch,’ he said as he leaned away from her far enough to crash his hand against her cheek in a backhand blow that was heavy enough to smash her face into the wall. The side of her head caught on a rusty bolt and she felt blood pouring out of her scalp and down her face.

  ‘The police know all about you,’ she said, coughing and tasting salt blood as it oozed between her painful lips. ‘And Biggleigh-Clart knows I’m here. You’ll never get away with this. The panic will get worse and you’ll betray yourself over and over again. Let me go.’

  He slammed his left hand against her mouth again as he fumbled in his pocket with his right, keeping her pinned against the wall with the weight of his body. When he looked up she saw that he was way beyond the reach of reason. His mouth was cruelly twisted and his eyes were wild.

  It isn’t a knife, she said to herself, trying to keep looking at both his face and his hand. It can’t be a knife. Fight, damn you. She pushed her shoulders back against the concrete in an effort to thrust him away with her pelvis and her legs. But she could not force him to move. Her mind would not work properly; she could not think what else to do. At last it told her to shout. She moved her head just enough to get a grip on his fingers with her teeth. As as he flinched and let his hand slip to her neck, she yelled:

  ‘Help!’

  It was not loud enough. Swallowing a mouthful of blood and gagging against the taste, she tried again. ‘Help!’

  No one came.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Certes bring a thin polythene bag up out of his pocket and knew what he was going to do. She forced her bloody face down against the hard bar of his arm, bending her head this way and that so that he could not get the bag over it with only one hand and pushing as hard as she could against him. She felt the imprisoning arm move and his upper body arch back so that he could use both hands.

  Without thinking what she was doing. Willow lifted her right hand in a horizontal V-sign and drove her nails hard into his eyeballs. The pressure against her collapsed as Certes doubled up, screaming, his hands covering his face.

  Willow yelled for help again, running between the Porsches and the MR2s, the Jaguars and the Daimlers towards the far end where an illuminated arrow offered hope. As she rounded the corner at the bottom of the ramp up the street, she saw a uniformed man sitting in the glass cubicle. From yards away she could see the earphones over his head. She ran and banged on the glass door.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked before he looked at her properly. Then he grabbed her arms. ‘What have you done to yourself? What’s happened?’

  Willow simply pointed behind her and together they ran to where Certes was crouching against the wall with his hands half covering his face.

  ‘Christ!’ said the attendant when he caught sight of the man’s eyes. ‘D’you do that, miss?’

  ‘Hang on to him,’ said Willow. ‘I’m going to get help.’

  ‘There’s an emergency phone on the wall there. Get an ambulance quick.’ He looked back at the huddled, roaring man on the floor. ‘And the police.’

  ‘I will,’ she said and reached for the telephone, which she had never even noticed.

  After that she hardly remembered anything until she was sitting on a hard chair in the casualty department of the nearest hospital waiting to have her face dressed. The police had talked to her, she knew, although she could not remember what she had said to them or they to her. One of them was sitting beside her, though whether for protection or restraint she could not remember.

  The pain in her cheek, where her own teeth had slammed into the soft flesh and torn it, seemed to be increasing and she kept shaking. Suddenly, she remembered that the chief executive had been expecting her to go back to his office. She stood up, looking around for a telephone.

  The young constable beside her got up and put a hand nervously on her shoulder, trying to persuade her to sit down again. Willow told him that she had to call the bank. He insisted on going with her to the telephon
e boxes.

  She spoke to Biggleigh-Clart and explained something of what had happened.

  ‘I know all about it,’ he said with a short, humourless laugh. ‘That sort of thing can’t happen here without my being told. How are you? They said you weren’t too badly hurt.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, feeling as though her tongue was twice its normal size and her whole head hurt. ‘Have you given the police the telephone tapes?’

  It was not what she had planned to say and she could not understand why she so badly wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Thank God.’ Willow suddenly felt desperately tired as she realized why it was so important.

  There was still no actual evidence of Certes’s guilt. The police would obviously believe that he had assaulted her when the saw the state of her face, but she had done far worse damage to him. She felt sick and afraid of herself. Certes might never be charged with Sarah Allfarthing’s murder. He might not even be guilty. Biggleigh-Clart was talking but she could not hear him.

  Willow felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see the young constable gesturing at Jane Moreby, who was walking down the passage towards them.

  ‘I must go,’ she said into the telephone. ‘I’ll report later.’ She put the telephone down as he made another inaudible protest.

  Willow turned to face Jane Moreby, who looked angrier and colder than ever.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  Despite the expression on her face her voice was almost gentle and Willow, who had been expecting criticism at the least, nodded, suddenly unable to speak. Her legs began to shake again and all the terror she had not allowed herself to feel in the car park overcame her and with it the horror of what she had done to Certes’s eyes. She couldn’t see properly and she couldn’t stand up. The voices all around her were buzzing in her ears so that she could not distinguish any words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, as she leaned against the wall, her forehead feeling the coolness of the cream-painted wall. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  The constable put a shoulder under her right arm and helped her back to the chair where she had been waiting. Jane Moreby sat down beside her.

  ‘A doctor’s coming. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Was it Certes? I must know.’ Willow said urgently. ‘Was it him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane definitely. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what we’ve found when your face has been dealt with and you’ve had a chance to recover. But you were right about enough to make it all pretty clear: his mother was a Bicklington-Heath before she married; Sarah Allfarthing did ring him up that day; and it looks as though one of the fingerprints on the sellotape is his. We don’t know how he got into the Corporate Finance Department, but we’re working on it. Don’t think about it any longer. We can make a good case. Richard Crescent will be released as soon as the formalities can be dealt with. Martin Roylandson is very efficient. Ah, here’s the doctor. Can you give her something?’

  ‘Tracy told him the code for the doors,’ said Willow as the doctor led her away. ‘I’m sure of it. Don’t go away.’ Jane Moreby said nothing.

  When a nurse had cleaned the dried blood from Willow’s scalp and face, and washed out the inside of her right cheek with something that stung and burned, the doctor examined her. He asked her all kinds of questions, tested her eyes, probed the pain in her face for serious damage and ultimately decided that nothing had been broken. He put two stitches in her scalp, gave her some powerful painkillers, and told her to go home and rest.

  Willow emerged, shaky but just about in control of her legs, to find Tom Worth waiting for her. He stood up as he saw her and came to take her arm. He seemed to promise infinite safety and Willow reached out for him.

  ‘Jane had to go, but I’ll take you home,’ he said and Willow almost wept in relief.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said when he had helped her into his car. ‘But it’s not a broken promise. I didn’t set out to trap him or provoke him. It was stupidity, not –’

  ‘Hush, Will,’ he said, taking her to the door. ‘You don’t have to apologize. I just wish …’ He stopped, took a deep breath and went on: ‘I just wish that I had been there. But you’re all right. That’s what matters.’

  He drove her back to the flat, where Mrs Rusham was waiting.

  ‘It’s nearly over,’ said Willow when she had soothed her housekeeper’s concern for her injuries. ‘Richard will be home soon.’

  ‘I know. Chief Inspector Worth told me. I’m so sorry about what’s happened to you, Miss Woodruffe. I’ve made up your bed and there’s some consommé ready for when you’ve had your bath.’

  Willow managed a smile, although the widening of her lips hurt ferociously.

  ‘Thank you. But you shouldn’t have waited. It’s far past your time.’

  ‘I wanted to wait. The soup is in a pan. It just needs heating.’

  ‘I can cope with that, Mrs Rusham,’ said Tom cheerfully. ‘You go on home. I’ll look after her.’

  Willow said good night to her housekeeper and went to wash the grime and sweat off her body. When she was dry she put on a new silk nightdress and went back to her bedroom. There were fresh linen sheets on the bed and new flowers in the vases. And Mrs Rusham had lit a fire in the swept hearth, despite the heat of the August evening.

  With a painful smile at the incongruity of it all, Willow slid into bed and lay against the pillows. Tom brought her a tray with a flat bowl of soup and a plate of thin brown bread with the crusts cut off. She lay drinking it and watching him fetch himself a glass of whisky and sit down in a low chair at her side.

  The curtains had been drawn and the only light in the room came from the fire and the pink-shaded lamps on either side of the bed. They cast an easy glow over the pretty room that seemed worlds away from the violence in which she had indulged that afternoon. Willow put down her spoon, feeling sick.

  ‘Have I blinded him?’ she said suddenly.

  Tom looked up. The low flickering firelight accentuated the bump in his broken nose. He shook his head.

  ‘No. You hurt him badly, but not as badly as that.’

  Willow let her head fall back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘You don’t know enough yet to damage anyone badly. It was a good effort, Will, and I’m proud of you. But when you’re over this I want you to let me teach you how to look after yourself, and to know exactly how much damage you’re doing. Will you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’d be grateful. I realized at Mill Cottage that I needed to know,’ she said. ‘By the way, where did Jane go?’

  ‘Back to work. He’s under arrest, but still in hospital. She thought you might like to hear the telephone call Sarah made to him and so she’s made a duplicate of the relevant bit of the bank’s tape. D’you want to hear it now?’

  ‘Yes, please. There’s a cassette player in my writing room.’

  Tom went to fetch it and a few minutes later Willow was listening to Sarah Allfarthing’s voice for the first time. It was deep and very pleasant with a slightly husky edge to it.

  ‘Could I speak to James Certes, please?’

  ‘I’ll put you through.’

  ‘James? It’s Sarah here. Something rather frightful has happened that I must talk to you about.’

  ‘What? What have you heard?’ The sharpness in Certes’s voice told Willow a lot about his state of mind. He must have been living in almost constant fear of discovery.

  ‘It’s a letter I’ve got here. I think we really ought to talk about it. I shan’t take any action until we’ve met, but I shall need to do something quickly. It’s horribly important and rather a shock.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t possibly say over the phone.’

  ‘I’m coming to Jeremy’s planning session this evening. We could meet after that.’

  ‘I can’t. I’ve got to go to this wretched dance tonight. We’r
e all supposed to be on duty in our glad rags by seven forty-five. Are you busy tomorrow at lunchtime?’

  ‘Yes, but if it’s really that important I could cancel.’

  ‘It really is.’

  ‘You intrigue me.’ Certes’s voice was light, almost teasing.

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘All right. I’ll meet you at the champagne bar at twelve forty-five.’

  ‘Thanks. Don’t talk to any of them about this tonight, will you?’

  ‘Certainly not. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Tom clicked off the tape.

  ‘It is hideously ironic, isn’t it?’ said Willow. ‘Certes was one of the two people whom she considered to be her friends. If she hadn’t trusted him, she’d never have summoned him like that to talk about her difficulties with Biggleigh-Clart and Certes would never have got himself in a position where he needed to kill her.’

  ‘But why do you suppose he went up to her office? I’m probably being thick,’ said Tom with the smile Willow loved, ‘but what did he hope to achieve?’

  ‘I suspect.’ Willow answered slowly, staring into the fire, ‘that he believed everyone would be at the dance and he seized the chance to get hold of the letter. If it had been as inflammatory as he thought, she’d hardly have left it in the bank, but…’

  ‘But she’d hardly have put it in her evening bag either,’ said Tom.

  ‘No. And in the message, she did say she had the letter “here”. I think he remembered Tracy’s telling him the number for the doors and decided to go up to find it. We’ll never know what happened when he saw Sarah there, what she said, why he still thought she was blackmailing him. What is clear is that he was in such a panic that he killed her. Poor woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom and for a moment they both thought of the clever, elegant woman with the husky voice who had tried to keep her husband, her daughter, her colleagues and her clients happy while still driving herself to succeed in a world in which she would always be mistrusted.