Trick of the Dark

by McDermid, Val

  'Makes perfect sense to me,' Charlie said. 'You've had a complicated year. And right at the heart of it is losing Philip. And that's a massive loss.'

  'Yeah. And that's sort of got lost in everything else.' Magda walked through to the living room and stretched out on the sofa. 'People think because I'm with Jay now that I've somehow forgotten Philip. And that's rubbish.'

  'Of course it is. I don't want to intrude-I don't know what your rationale was for marrying Philip — but I imagine you really cared for him.'

  Magda smiled, a sad reminiscent look in her eyes. 'I loved him. The same way I love Patrick and Andrew. He reminded me of my brothers in so many ways. He was very kind, and the sex thing, that was OK. You know? Nothing sensational, but not repulsive or anything. I've thought a lot about this and I'm not proud of myself. The bottom line is I married him because he asked me, Charlie. Because he asked me and I knew it was the easy option. Easy for me, and also what everyone wanted me to do. That's pathetic, isn't it?'

  'It's not pathetic. I've known a lot of people who have married for much worse reasons. I didn't imagine for a moment that you'd done it lightly. Or that you had any intention other than to make it work. Bad luck for you that you hadn't worked out why you liked the girls so much.'

  Magda could hear the sympathetic laughter in Charlie's voice. In spite of herself, she was laughing too. 'No, really,' she said. 'I kept telling myself it was just a sign of how immature I was, that I was still having teenage crushes.'

  'At least you finally picked up the clue phone. But that doesn't mean you stopped grieving for the person you lost.'

  Magda didn't know what to say. Yesterday that would have been true, unequivocally. But today, nothing to do with Philip was quite that simple. 'I was grieving for the person I thought he was,' she said at last. 'The trouble is, I'm still learning things about him. And they're not all likeable.'

  'I'm sorry,' Charlie said. 'That doesn't sound good. I can see how it would be confusing, on top of everything else you've been going through.'

  'To tell you the truth, I'm still trying to make sense of something I just found out. Something… It's hard to say this without sounding like a drama queen, but it's true. Something that's changed my whole picture of him.'

  A pause, then Charlie spoke gently. 'That sounds pretty shocking. I mean, it's been a while now since Philip died. I'd have thought anything that was going to come to light would have already.'

  'You'd think so,' Magda said heavily. She so wanted to tell someone, but she still wasn't sure that Charlie was the person. 'And you'd think I'd have known the real character of the man I chose to marry. Apparently not, though.'

  'It's no reflection on you,' Charlie said. 'We all want to think the best of people we care about. Nobody ever wants to believe their friend or their partner or their kid is capable of the really shameful stuff. When we love people, we can tie ourselves in all sorts of knots to find an explanation for their behaviour.'

  It was hard to resist the warmth of Charlie's voice as well as the sense of what she said. Magda knew she was accustomed professionally to holding people's secrets. And she hadn't turned a hair when Magda had told her the truth about when she'd met Jay. Almost without realising she'd made the decision, Magda decided to talk. 'He was a cheat and a liar and a traitor to his friends. And I don't understand why.'

  She could hear Charlie's intake of breath. But the hard words didn't shock Charlie into silence. 'Those are big words, Magda.'

  'Believe me, Charlie, this is a big thing. What would you say if a complete stranger handed you an envelope with eight hundred thousand euros? Then told you it came from the proceeds of illegal insider trading?'

  'Eight hundred thousand euros? In cash? Someone gave you eight hundred thousand euros in cash?'

  'Not actual cash. Bearer bonds, they're called. Apparently they're the equivalent of cash. Untraceable, anonymous. But yes. This total spiv was waiting for me when I got home last night and he handed them over to me. I was shaken to the core. I mean, what would you have done, Charlie?'

  'I suppose the first thing I'd want to know was what it had to do with me. To make sure the guy had the right person.'

  'Oh, he had the right person all right. It's my money. It's mine because it belonged to my dead husband. Unattributable, it's true. But freshly laundered. And mine.'

  'It sounds like something out of a movie. How come you're only hearing about this now?'

  'The spivvy guy — Nigel Fisher Boyd, his name is — said he'd hung on to it till now because he didn't want to put me in an awkward position at the trial. Because here's what really gets me, Charlie. Philip made all this money — all this and more — doing exactly what he was planning to shop Joanna and Paul for. That's what makes no sense to me.'

  'I'm still trying to get my head round the idea of having that much money put in your hands when you're not expecting it.'

  Magda jumped to her feet again and began to pace in agitation. 'Tell me about it. It completely freaked me out, and Jay's away on a trip so I couldn't even talk to her about it.'

  'Poor you. It's no fun, having to deal with something like that by yourself.'

  'Why would Philip expose himself to a police investigation by shopping Joanna and Paul? Why take the chance?'

  Charlie made a wordless sound that seemed to indicate puzzled agreement. 'On the face of it, it's taking a hell of a risk. He must have been very confident of having covered his own tracks to set the cops on his business partners.'

  'Maybe he thought the authorities wouldn't look too closely at him if he was the supposedly shocked whistleblower,' Magda said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice.

  'There must have been some pressing reason. Something that made the risk worth taking. What if they were being a bit careless, throwing the money around, leaving a paper trail? And Philip thought he needed to close them down to protect himself. And you too, I suppose. Maybe he'd even decided to clean up his act since you were getting married. What if that's what it was about? Get everything above board, ready for a fresh start?'

  Magda considered the idea for a moment then dismissed it. 'Nice thought, but it doesn't make me feel any better about what he planned to do to Joanna and Paul. They were supposed to be his best pals. I could never do that to my friends. Could you?'

  'I'd like to think not. But none of us knows what we're capable of till we're confronted by it. Don't judge him too harshly, Magda. You can't ask him what he did and why he did it. There's no point in torturing yourself imagining what was going on when you can never know.'

  Magda sighed. She could see the sense in what Charlie was saying, but she was a long way from accepting it. 'I don't know where I'm going to end up with this, Charlie. And then there's the money. What am I going to do about that?'

  'It's your money. Philip wanted you to have it.'

  'But it's dirty money. It's tainted. I don't want it.'

  'Give it away, then. Do something good with it. Take your time and think about it. Choose a charity that does work you believe in. And make the gift in Philip's name, if that feels right. I know you're shocked, you despise what he did. But don't let that destroy your good memories. Hold on to the things you know were good about him. He was that man too, you know.'

  Magda felt tears pricking her eyes and sniffed hard. 'You're right,' she croaked.

  'It's always best to take your time. Don't make any decisions in a hurry.'

  Magda managed a cracked laugh through the tears. 'I let myself fall for Jay pretty quickly. And that's turned out OK.'

  For a moment, there was silence and she wondered if they'd been cut off. But at last, Charlie said, 'And she'll help you come to terms with this, I'm sure.'

  'Thanks for listening, Charlie. It's really helped to get it off my chest before Jay gets back from Bologna. Sometimes it feels like all I've done is bring her problem after problem.'

  'That's what partners are for.'

  Magda smiled. 'That's what she says. But she's much be
tter at handling her own shit rather than bringing it all home to me. I feel guilty sometimes.'

  'Well, any time you want another set of ears, you can give me a call.'

  'Thanks. I appreciate you listening. And what you had to say. I'd better go, though. I've got to pick Jay up at Gatwick.'

  Magda returned to the kitchen, in spite of the tears more cheered than she'd thought possible half an hour before. Hooking up with Charlie Flint had been an unexpected bonus. She remembered something Charlie had said the other day and realised how right she'd been. Her mother had indeed had great taste in babysitters.

  22

  Thursday

  One of the reasons Charlie had fallen in love with science in her teens was her need to find answers. It wasn't enough for her to learn textbooks by rote; she wanted the why and the wherefore. So she was never going to be satisfied by a text from Nick saying he'd drawn a blank on Jay Stewart's sat-phone. 'There's got to be a way,' Charlie muttered to herself. She stared at the computer screen, frowning at 24/7's home page.

  Then it dawned on her. Ranged around the main content of the page were sponsored links to 24/7's partner sites. Bargain flight companies. Hotel booking sites. Car rental. And cheap international phone calls. She clicked through to doitnow.com and found similar links to their associate companies. 'They would have had a deal,' Charlie said. 'Of course they would.'

  But that was only the first part of the answer. Knowing who 24/7's phone partner was in 2010 wasn't much help when it came to finding out who the preferred satellite phone company of doitnow.com had been ten years earlier. She could try calling doitnow.com, but she didn't rate her chances of finding anyone who'd been out of school at the turn of the millennium, never mind working for the company and paying attention to details like sat-phone deals.

  She was pretty sure that what she needed didn't exist. When you wanted to know what the Daily Mirror looked like in 1900, never mind 2000, you could go and look at an archive copy. But all those early websites with their mad colour contrasts and ugly fonts had disappeared without trace. Hadn't they? Expecting nothing, Charlie Googled 'website archive' and was amazed to discover a site dedicated to preserving the digital equivalent of back numbers. Admittedly, it only went back as far as 2004, but it was impressive.

  What was even more impressive was that they had doitnow.com's home page from August 2004. There was a link to a regular mobile phone company. And to her astonishment and delight, right down at the bottom left-hand corner of the page was a tiny sponsored ad. 'Going where they don't even have railway signals? You need a sat-phone. We supply the world's news organisations. Rent a holiday sat-phone from us.' Of course, when she tried to click on the site, she discovered it was deactivated. But at least this was a starting point.

  She called Nick, forgetting he'd be at work. His phone went to voicemail. 'Nick, it's Charlie. Doitnow.com had a sat-phone partnership with Stratosphone back in 2004. Maybe they gave the boss a freebie? Worth checking, don't you think?' Donkey work, it was true, but he had offered to help. He couldn't start complaining now.

  Next on Charlie's list was sorting out a trip to Skye. She'd been amazed to discover you couldn't fly to the island. It seemed counter-intuitive. You could fly to any Greek island that had enough level ground to squeeze a runway on, but you couldn't fly to one of the UK's tourist magnets. It was a five-hour drive or more from Glasgow, itself three and a half hours from Manchester. And she had a teaching session on Monday that she couldn't afford to miss. Getting back on Sunday would take most of the day, so it made sense to leave at the crack of dawn on Friday. To her surprise, Maria had announced over breakfast that she wanted to come along. 'I've always wanted to go to Skye,' she'd said. 'And I expect there really aren't very many midges around so early in the season. What do you say? You're not going to be sleuthing all the time, are you? We'll be able to see a bit of the place?'

  'I expect so. And you can always go off on your own if I find a hot scent to sniff at. But what about your patients?'

  Maria spread her toast and gave Charlie a wicked little smile. 'I'm always so bloody dutiful,' she said. 'Just for once, I feel like playing truant. Besides, I only ever book morning appointments on a Friday. It won't be the end of the world if I miss an afternoon's admin. I'll get Sharla to call my patients this morning. It won't kill them to rebook. There's nothing urgent, as far as I recall. What do you say? Shall I come? Shall we have a bit of fun?'

  It had been hard to resist Maria's enthusiasm, even though a tiny corner of Charlie's mind had been playing with the dangerous notion of inviting Lisa to come to Skye with her. Much more sensible to go with Maria, she told herself. With a wry smile, she logged on to doitnow.com and set about arranging a short break on the Isle of Skye at even shorter notice.

  That done, there was nothing to distract her from communicating with Lisa. She'd sent a quick text yesterday, just to say she'd had to go back to Manchester and had been too busy to see Lisa before she left. Charlie didn't know what was worse — going cold turkey on communication with Lisa or diving in at the deep end. For now, she was giving up giving up and getting back into the groove of weighing every word.

  Hi, Lisa

  Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday. The day just ran away from me. I don't have to tell you how that goes.

  I wish there had been the opportunity for us to spend more time together when I was in Oxford. As it turned out, there were more calls on my time than I anticipated. But I hope I'll have good reason for coming back to Oxford very soon. It's clear there are things we have to discuss, and I can't wait to see you again. I'm sorry I have brought complication to your life, but I can't help thinking that the complication carries the seed of something very positive.

  In the meantime, I am off to the Isle of Skye, where Kathy Lipson died in the notorious 'cutting the rope' incident back in 2000. Maria's coming too, apparently she's always had a hankering to visit. We're staying at the same hotel where Jay and Kathy were based. Not that any of the staff will still be there. I expect there will be a Lithuanian receptionist, Polish barman and a Romanian breakfast waitress, like everywhere rural these days. The locals escape as soon as they can to cities with anonymous nightlife and better wages. Thank heavens for the Eastern Europeans or our leisure culture would collapse. I expect the mountain rescue team will still have most of the same guys, though.

  Let me know if there are any days that are better for you next week. I can do any day except Wednesday.

  Love,

  Charlie

  She read it through twice, changed a couple of words, then sent it, knowing she would be checking her in-box every twenty minutes for the rest of the day. But to her surprise, when she came back from the kitchen with a fresh cup of coffee, the new mail icon was flashing on her desktop. One click brought her mail box up, but the fresh message wasn't from Lisa. She couldn't help the pang of disappointment, only slightly tempered by the realisation it was from Nick.

  With a sigh, Charlie opened it.

  Charlie: Swedes are amazing. I got a number for Ulf Ingemarsson's gf, Liv Aronsson, from a journalist! Can you believe it? No warrant or threats necessary, he just handed it over. School's out 3.30 local time, so 2.30 here. This is a mobile, so any time after that I guess. I think she might talk more to you than to a cop.

  Not so disappointing after all. Charlie glanced at the clock. Three hours to kill. It was strange. When she'd had a job, she'd always craved time to herself to read, to catch up with Radio 4 podcasts, to go swimming or just to lie on the sofa listening to music. Now she had the time, it hung heavy on her hands. She struggled to keep her mind occupied, and when her mind was at a loose end, either Lisa crept out of the corners and invaded her space or else she brooded endlessly and fruitlessly about her upcoming trials and tribulations. It was a toss-up which activity was the more pointless. Sometimes it seemed all she could think of was Lisa — her eyes, her smile, her playful humour, her emotional intelligence. There was something irresistible about her, some
attraction so powerful it bled the brightness from Charlie's image of Maria. This wasn't what she wanted, but it was growing no easier to resist.

  'Get over yourself, Charlie,' she said, abruptly switching to Google. She wanted to see whether she could track down the record of the Fatal Accident Inquiry relating to Kathy Lipson's death. The more she could uncover before she went to Skye, the easier it would be.

  The FAI report made riveting reading. There was a list of witnesses, a precis of all their evidence, a description of the background and circumstances of the incident as well as the cause of death — injuries to the head and internal organs as a result of a fall from Sgurr Dearg mountain on the Isle of Skye. The only critical note sounded in the Sheriff's conclusion was the suggestion that climbers should make sure their routes were within their capabilities and experience. By the time she'd finished reading and making notes about what she might ask the mountain rescue witnesses, it was almost three o'clock. Liv Aronsson should be free of small children by now, she reckoned.

  Charlie plugged the phone into her digital recorder then dialled the number, still without a clear idea of how she was going to play it. She'd let Ms Aronsson take the lead and see where that got them. The phone rang out several times before a breathless voice answered. 'Tja?'

  'Is that Liv Aronsson?' Charlie said.

  A short pause, then the voice said, 'This is Liv. Who are you?'

  'My name is Charlie Flint. Dr Charlie Flint. I wondered if I might speak to you about Ulf Ingemarsson.' Charlie was conscious of speaking distinctly and more slowly than usual while trying not to sound condescending.

  'Are you a journalist?' Her English was clear, her accent imposing a sing-song rhythm.

  'No. I'm a psychiatrist.' She checked that the recorder was working, then wondered if she should be recording herself in what was, at the very least, a deceptive role.