Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  She reached towards the cigarette packet on the table, then changed her mind and left it where it was. She found herself reluctant suddenly to draw attention to the tremors in her hands, and doubted her ability to hold the flame steady long enough to light a cigarette. "But Meg won't be there," she continued in her deep voice. "She's on holiday in France at the moment."

  "Well, that would explain why we've had difficulty contacting her," said Maddocks, as if hearing this information for the first time. He glanced towards Alan Protheroe. "In fact, Doctor, I really don't think we need keep you, not unless Miss Kingsley feels nervous at being left on her own." He smiled down at her. "Do you, Miss Kingsley?"

  She shrugged indifferently. "Not in the least."

  "Then thank you very much, sir. We won't be long." Maddocks stood by the open door.

  Alan frowned at him angrily, well aware that he was being railroaded. "I'd rather stay, Jinx," he said. "I'm sure your father would expect me to."

  She gave her low laugh. "I'm sure you're right, but as you keep trying to persuade me, Dr. Protheroe, I call the shots, not my father. Thank you anyway. I think I can manage a few questions on my own."

  "Well, you know where I am if you need me." He allowed himself to be closed out by Maddocks's firm hand on the door. He wished he knew what the hell was going on. It was obvious that Jinx was as reluctant as the policemen to let him listen in on the conversation.

  Inside the room, Maddocks beamed encouragingly at Jinx. "Any idea which part of France, Miss Kingsley?"

  She shook her head. "No, but I can probably guess. I know the man she's gone with. His name's Leo Wallader and he has a cottage on the south coast of Brittany. The address is Les Hirondelles, rue St. Jacques, Trinite-sur-mer. There is a telephone, but again"-she gave a small shrug-"the number's in my address book."

  Maddocks nodded. "But if you know she's in France," he said with a puzzled frown, "why did you telephone her London number?"

  Jinx looked at him for a moment, then picked up her cigarette packet and tapped a cigarette into her fingers. Nicotine was more important than pride. She reached for the lighter but Fraser was there before her, holding the flame steady beneath the wavering tip. She thanked him with a smile. "Meg can ring her answering machine and listen to her messages," she said. "I assumed that's what she'd do."

  "Who told you she was in France?"

  "Her partner, Josh Hennessey." She gazed at him through the smoke. "He phoned me on Wednesday."

  Maddocks glanced towards Fraser to see if he'd written that down. "And has Meg called you back, Miss Kingsley?"

  "Not yet, no."

  "Is this Mr. Hennessey in contact with her?"

  "Not as far as I know. She didn't give him a contact number."

  He made a play of consulting his notebook. "In fact, we know about Mr. Leo Wallader. He came up in connection with your car accident. I believe he was your fiance until a couple of weeks ago?"

  She blew a stream of smoke into the air and watched it ripple towards the ceiling. "That's right," she said evenly.

  "But he preferred your friend Meg Harris and left you for her."

  She smiled slightly. "Right again, Inspector."

  "So perhaps Miss Harris is embarrassed to phone you," he suggested, "despite your insistence in your message that you don't bear grudges."

  She tapped ash into the ashtray. "To tell you the truth," she said slowly, "I can't really remember what I said." She looked at him with an inquiring expression in her dark eyes. "You talked about political incorrectness, said you ought to be ripping her first editions to pieces, told her you'd lost your memory after driving at a concrete post, and asked her to phone you here if she could stand the embarrassment of talking to you. Does that ring any bells?"

  "Only alarm ones," she murmured. "You were very precise in your introductory spiel. You said that Hammersmith police had listened to her messages, taken down this phone number, and then asked you to contact me here for her parents' address. You made no mention of listening to the tape yourself." She pressed the palm of her hand against the side of her head where a pain was beginning. "So either you were there when they listened, or they made a copy which they sent on to you."

  "They faxed us a transcript," said Maddocks. "Why does that alarm you?"

  "May I see the fax?"

  He glanced at Fraser again. "Did we bring it with us, Sergeant? The last time I saw it, it was on your desk."

  The young man shook his head. "Sorry, Gov. I didn't think we'd need it." He turned to prop his notebook against the wall, hoping that his anger and unease were less obvious than they felt.

  Jinx watched him for a moment. He was a poor liar, she thought, but then his complexion was against him. He was fair, like Fergus, and the blood ran too easily to his face. She felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He had a bully for a boss and she knew better than anyone that it took a peculiar kind of courage to stand up to bullies. "As a matter of interest," she said calmly, "why didn't you phone Meg's business number and ask Josh these questions?"

  "Because Hammersmith have been unable to locate it," said Maddocks. "As I explained at the beginning, she appears to be in the process of moving out. According to them, there's nothing left except a few first editions, some clothes, and the cat."

  She turned to Fraser. "So who's looking after Marmaduke?"

  "The neighbor, Mrs. Helms," he answered obligingly.

  There was a long silence.

  "What exactly has happened to Meg?" asked Jinx quietly. "I can't believe that Winchester CID would go all the way to London to search someone's flat just because her credit cards have been stolen."

  Maddocks, controlling an urge to show Fraser what a pillock he thought him, perched instead on the edge of Jinx's bed and leaned forward, hands clamped between his knees. "It wasn't only hers that were stolen," he admitted gravely, "but Mr. Wallader's as well. The registered address for his cards is Twelve Glenavon Gardens, Richmond, which was already in the Hampshire police file as a result of your accident. Richmond police were able to give us the address and telephone number of Leo's parents because they retrieved that information from your house following the crash. However, when we contacted Sir Anthony to discover where Leo and Meg have gone, he couldn't tell us anything. And that worried us, because we couldn't understand why neither of them had notified the credit companies that their cards had been stolen. If they're in a cottage in Brittany, then perhaps that explains it, but I don't understand why Sir Anthony couldn't give us the address."

  She drew away from him into the back of her chair and tried to control the panic in her heart. Something else had happened ... something so terrible that she was too frightened to search her memory for it... "He doesn't know it," she said in an uneven voice which came back to her through the thudding, racing blood in her ears. "He knows very little about his son. Philippa, too."

  Maddocks's heavy face drew closer, his shrewd little eyes fixed on hers. "Are you all right, Miss Kingsley?"

  "Yes, thank you." Something else had happened ... Forget ... forget ... FORGET! "As far as they're concerned," she went on more steadily, "his only capital assets are a few stocks and shares, when in fact he has the cottage in Brittany, a house in London, which he rents out to anyone who can afford it, and a condominium in Florida. There could be a great deal more, for all I know. Those are the three he told me about."

  "Do you know the address of the London house?"

  They'd had a row ... Anthony and Philippa had been there ... I want to marry Meg ... Meg's a whore ... She flicked her gaze back to Maddocks's face. "Only that it's in Chelsea somewhere," she said, licking her lips nervously. "His solicitor could tell you. His name's Maurice Bloom and he has an office somewhere off Fleet Street. I'm sure you can find him through the Law Society."

  Maddocks checked to see that Fraser had taken down the name. "Is there a good reason why he doesn't want his parents to know about his properties?" he asked her.

  She thought about that. ' 'It dep
ends on your definition of good. Yes, he has a reason, and personally, I think it stinks, but it makes sense to Leo." She paused. "I can't really tell you what it is without sounding bitter."

  "I think we need to know," said the Inspector.

  Did they? She was finding it hard to concentrate. I said goodbye to Leo at breakfast ... we're getting married on the second of July... "They're a type, not Philippa so much perhaps, but Anthony and Leo certainly." Her voice sounded strangely remote again. "You never pay for anything if you can get someone else to pay for you, you use other people's expertise to help you up the ladder, and you plead poverty all the time while making snide remarks about how wealthy everyone else is. It becomes very wearing very quickly for the person who's being bled, particularly when you know that the parasite you're supporting is rolling in it." Was she mad? These were the last people who should be hearing her confession. Talk to the doctor... he wants your stay here to be comfortable ... it's a free choice...

  Maddocks watched her eyes grow huge in a face made tiny by her lack of hair. He felt the pull of their attraction even while he was thinking: Got you, you murdering bitch. You really hated the poor bastard. "And Leo did this to you?" he asked gently.

  "Not immediately. He wasn't so crass. Actually, he was quite generous at the beginning. It was only when he moved into Glenavon Gardens that I realized what I'd saddled myself with." She took deep breaths.

  "There's no hurry, Miss Kingsley. Take your time."

  Memories of Russell's murder flooded her mind. Take your time ... there's no hurry ... We know your father hated him enough to kill him ... we know your father's a psychopath... "He's a believer in the what's-yours-is-mine principle," she said in a rush to drown out the voices in her head, "but without the reciprocity. He was just as secretive with me as he was with his parents. I only found out about his properties when Maurice Bloom phoned him at my house one day, and it was clear from his end of the conversation that he owned something in Florida. I was angry enough to make him tell me about it, because he had given me the impression he was in financial difficulties." So much so, that, like Fergus, he had borrowed money from her handbag. God, she remembered now. It was the meanness that had finally got to her, the tax dodges, the obsessive secrecy surrounding his bank and credit card statements, the me-me-me of his lifestyle.

  "What sort of job did he have?"

  She noted the past tense but let it pass. "He called himself a stockbroker but, as he never mentioned clients by name, I guessed he was playing the markets for himself."

  "Did he go out to work each day?"

  He certainly went somewhere each day. "He spends his time in the City." I want to marry Meg... "Keeping his finger on the pulse, as he calls it."

  "What sort of financial difficulties did he say he was in?"

  "He said he'd lost everything on some bad investments but I think he was lying. He was always complaining about how badly off he was compared with me. He used to do the same with his father."

  "Yet you said his father's the same."

  She had let rip the day she decided to end it, told them all what she thought of them, called them overprivileged leeches whose only claim to respectability was that one of their ancestors had had the brains and the balls to earn a title. "Anthony's certainly very mean. He never pays bills until the final demand arrives, in the hopes the business may have gone under before he has to write the check."

  "If I understood you right, Miss Kingsley, you're saying Leo touches his father for money."

  She nodded but didn't say anything. God, but they'd hated her for it. And triumphant Leo had told her he'd been having an affair with Meg, and that she was the one he wanted to marry. And the shock had been ENORMOUS! She remembered it all. Anthony's loathing: "You're the daughter of a barrow boy ... we never wanted you in this family..." Philippa's distress: "Do stop ... do stop ... words can't be taken back..." Leo's sulk ... "I want to marry Meg ... I want to marry Meg..."

  "Which is why he's never told him about these properties he owns?" Maddocks suggested. "He doesn't want his father to know what he's actually worth."

  She nodded again. "He was-is," she corrected herself, "obsessive about money. They both are." She called her thoughts back from the past. "One thing I can absolutely guarantee is that Leo would have his credit cards stopped the minute he realized they were stolen. And he certainly wouldn't leave for France without them."

  "So what are you saying?"

  I'm saying Leo's dead. A picture flashed out of nowhere into her tired brain. A lightning image, sharply defined, but so brief that it was gone again before she could register what it was. Meg's a whore ... Meg's a whore ... Too many secrets ... deja vu ... this has happened before... "God," she said, pressing a bruised hand to her chest, "I thought-just for a moment, I thought-" She looked blankly at Maddocks. "What did you ask me?"

  He hadn't missed the flicker of astonishment that swept across her face. "I was wondering what conclusions you've drawn from the fact that Leo hasn't had his cards stopped."

  She pressed trembling fingers to her forehead. "I feel awful," she said abruptly. "I think I'm going to be sick."

  Fraser bent down to look into her face. "I'll get the doctor to you," he said.

  "The name of Miss Harris's company, that's the only other thing we need," pressed Maddocks, getting to his feet. "We can take it from there. You said her partner was Josh Hennessey. What's the name of her company?"

  "Leave it out, Gov, for Christ's sake," said Fraser angrily, pressing the bell beside the bed. "Can't you see she's not well?"

  "Harris and Hennessey," she murmured. "The number's in the book beneath Meg's home number. M. S. Harris first, then Harris and Hennessey. I don't understand why you didn't call it before coming here."

  "Well?" demanded Maddocks of Fraser as he unlocked his car door. "Why the hell didn't we?"

  "Don't ask me, Gov. I went to Downton Court, remember. My recollection is that the Super instructed you to find out what you could about Meg Harris."

  "It's bloody Hammersmith's fault," said Maddocks irritably. "Goddammit, they've got the fucking telephone books in front of them." He slid behind the wheel. "What did you make of her?"

  Fraser folded himself into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. "I felt sorry for her. She looks really ill."

  "Hmm, well, it didn't stop her running rings around you, did it?" He fired the engine.

  "Or you," said Fraser curtly. "You set the alarm bells ringing, not me."

  But Maddocks wasn't listening. He thrust the car into gear and swung the wheel. "I'll tell you something-she certainly didn't like Leo very much, or the parents, either. You've met Sir Anthony. Would you say her description of him was accurate?"

  "You can't tell much about a man when he's in shock. He's not poor, that's for sure." He thought back. "Matter of fact, I did think he was a bit of a pseud, but the poor bastard was about to be hit with his son's death, so I didn't analyze overmuch."

  "It's odd, though," said Maddocks thoughtfully. "If she despised them all as much as she claims she did, then why was she going through with the wedding? I mean it was Leo who called it off, not her, and if he was so obsessive about money, why did he get shot of a Kingsley in order to hitch himself to a vicar's daughter? It doesn't ring true to me." He gave Fraser a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Well done, lad. Looks like you were right all along. She's our villain, no question about it. Now all we have to do is nail the bitch."

  Fraser had his doubts: She'd looked so damn good on paper, but the person, predictably, was a different matter. Could someone so frail have committed so physical a crime? "She's not strong enough, Gov. There were two of them and Leo was over six feet."

  Maddocks slowed at the clinic gates. "She's sharp as a tack. She used deception to kill them, not strength." He pulled onto the road. "And don't be seduced by that feeble-little-girl act either. Christ, I've never met such a calculating woman. She was one step ahead of us most of the time, and if she's suffering
from amnesia, I'll eat my hat."

  THE RAGGED STAFF, SALISBURY-6:30 P.M.

  WPC Blake, comfortably unobtrusive in jeans and a T-shirt, finally tracked Samantha Garrison to earth in a city-center pub. She was alone at the bar, a rather pathetic sight in a tight black strapless sheath that showed every one of her middle-aged bulges and encouraged her underarm fat to flow like soft lard over the sequined border. Limp hair hung like a damp curtain about her heavily made-up face and cheap scent rose in a thick miasma from her warm pores.

  "Samantha Garrison?" she asked, slipping on to the neighboring stool.

  "Oh Jesus," sighed the woman, "tell me you're not the filth, there's a love. I just don't need the aggro at the moment. I'm having a quiet drink in my local, all right? Do you see any customers? Because I sure as hell don't. Chance'd be a fine thing on a Sunday night in this miserable hellhole."

  "I'm not here for aggro," said Blake, catching the barman's eye. "What are you drinking?"

  Samantha eyed the half-pint of bitter that she'd been spinning out for the last forty minutes. "Double rum and Coke," she said.

  Blake ordered a gin and tonic for herself, waited for the drinks to arrive, then suggested they adjourn to an isolated table in the window.

  "You said no aggro," Samantha reminded her. "What do you want to say to me over there that you can't say here?"

  "I want to talk about what happened to you on the twenty-third of March. I thought it would be less embarrassing if we were a little more private."

  A bleak expression settled over the painted face. "I knew that one would come back to haunt me. What if I say I don't want to talk about it?"

  "Then I'll be conducting a one-sided conversation which everyone will hear." Blake glanced towards the barman. "I'm trying to make things easy for you, Samantha. If you'd rather, we can go back to your house."