Sour Grapes

by Natasha Cooper

  For the first time, she wondered how Anthony himself remembered them and whether he would be able to give her any rational explanation if she were ever to ask him why he had needed to torment her so.

  A young brown-haired woman was walking towards her, dressed in a short straight black skirt and a bright-green, gilt-buttoned jacket.

  ‘Annie?’ Emma said as she stood up. She had moved too quickly and her head swam unpleasantly until her balance had righted itself.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered the young woman, looking rather surprised. ‘Could you possibly be Emma Gnatche?’

  ‘Yes.’ At the sight of Annie’s obvious surprise, Emma remembered her old black jeans and the torn pockets of the jacket she had found in an Oxfam shop. They could hardly have looked less likely for someone who had drawled as snobbishly as she had done over the telephone or who had once worked in the Houses of Parliament. Privately amused, she hoped that she would be able to convince the other woman of her respectability.

  ‘Sorry I’m looking so tatty,’ she said, drawling again. ‘I’ve just been interviewing the sort of people who’d have been put off by my usual clothes. Shall we sit here and talk or would you rather walk?’

  ‘Could we walk?’ Annie said, looking reassured. ‘I’m a bit stiff actually. I went to the gym at lunchtime and overdid it: I’d like to keep my muscles moving.’ As they set off towards the lake, she added, ‘So tell me: what sort of research are you doing? You said something about cases like Andrew Lutterworth’s. D’you mean dangerous driving?’

  Emma explained her interest as diplomatically as possible.

  ‘And so,’ she went on, ‘wanting to know all sorts of things about what he was really like, I thought I’d come to you. After all, as his secretary, you must have known more about him than virtually anyone else. Was he a nice man?’

  Annie wrinkled up her nose and bit her lower lip.

  ‘It’s hard to say. Sometimes he could be great, a really good boss to work for. You know: giving one interesting things to do, not treating one as a moron and all that. And then sometimes he could be a right bastard.’

  ‘Had he always been like that, or did he change after his son died?’

  ‘Oh, no. I could’ve put up with that. Anyone would. I mean it was awful about Pipp, and it’s true Andy did go very peculiar then. Of course he did. I mean, who wouldn’t? No, the bastard tendencies had always been there. I’d worked for him for a while before Pipp died and then went on with him until he was arrested.’ She shivered in her good clothes.

  ‘Do you think he was guilty?’ asked Emma abruptly.

  ‘Of that car crash? Well, yes, he must have been. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it? Why? I don’t know enough about him, you see.’

  ‘Well, he confessed to it,’ said Annie as though that were all the answer anyone could possible need. Seeing Emma’s doubts she added with a humourless smile, ‘Andy would never have done that in a million years if he hadn’t been guilty. He loathed accepting the blame for anything and would always find someone else to pin it on if he could. I’m sure that’s why he withdrew the confession when he’d had a chance to toughen up again after the shock of knowing he’d killed those people.’

  ‘But he’d already reported his car as stolen before he was arrested,’ protested Emma. ‘Don’t you think his story might have been true?’

  Annie shook her head. There was intelligence in her eyes and the first signs of humour.

  ‘The whole business of the car being stolen always seemed to me to be such nonsense. It was just Andy’s sort of story. Someone did it. It wasn’t his fault. That was the usual scenario. Whenever there was any cataclysmic trouble in the office, he’d make sure no one could blame him. Once or twice I think he even removed memos from the file to “prove” that he couldn’t have known about something that went belly up and that he should’ve stopped.’

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ said Emma with a vivid memory of the man himself. ‘At his age and with all his status at Hill, Snow, Parkes?’

  ‘I know; you’d have thought that once he became a partner he’d have had the dignity to take whatever flak was coming, but he never could. I thought it made him look incredibly silly, but he’d go into extraordinary contortions to get out of the slightest fragment of blame, even putting it on to other partners sometimes and often on to the troops. The other partners loathed him for it, but he was always so clever—and good with clients, too—that they put up with him. Well, mostly. But quite a lot of people were quite glad to see him pulled down and humiliated by being arrested like that. I mean, he couldn’t exactly get out of that one, could he?’

  ‘I knew you’d know more about him than anyone else,’ said Emma in satisfaction. ‘Can you remember much about the morning he was arrested?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.’

  ‘I mean in detail.’

  ‘The same applies,’ Annie said, standing on the edge of the lake, watching a group of ducks and moorhens squabbling over pieces of sodden bread. ‘I couldn’t forget anything that happened that morning. It really was awful, you see. Much as I sometimes loathed him, I did… Well, it was awful. But they’d taken him long before I got to the office. There isn’t anything I could tell you about that. I don’t know anything that could help you.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Emma, ‘but on the other hand, you might. Tell me everything you can remember about what you heard and saw. Had he left you any work for instance?’

  ‘Oh, God yes! Masses. There was an enormous pile of stuff beside my screen. I could have killed him when I saw it, to tell you the truth. I’d been late enough the night before finishing something that he said he absolutely must get out the door before I left. And I was due to go to the theatre that night. It wasn’t fair, but then he never was fair. I didn’t leave the building until after eight and so I missed the whole of the first act. I was still seething next morning, and then there was all the new stuff.’

  Emma looked at Annie and realised that she had never made the connection. Clearly none of the police officers nor the defence team had seen it either. Rather pleased that she had proved Jag wrong about something, Emma decided that it was not for her to enlighten Annie. Instead she asked some more anodyne questions and then said she probably ought to go.

  ‘But I haven’t told you anything useful yet. Don’t you want to know more about Andy?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, scandal and all that.’

  ‘Was there any?’ asked Emma, belatedly remembering Hal’s theories about a mistress, and her own sense that Lutterworth was interested in sex.

  ‘He always had pretty roving hands. It’s really frowned on at Hill, Snow, like in most places nowadays, but it does still go on a bit.’

  ‘Did he try it on with you?’

  ‘Only when I first went to work with him. It was a sort of automatic thing with him, I think. But when he saw I wasn’t having any of it, he stopped at once.’

  ‘That must have been a relief.’ Emma was amused at the thought of passing on that bit of news to Jane, who had been so dismissive of her suggestion that Andrew might have been susceptible to women. ‘So no sexual harassment of you. Did he have much success with other people, d’you know?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He talked a lot about it, which suggests that perhaps he didn’t actually do anything very much.’ She and Emma both laughed.

  ‘Was there ever any talk about a particular woman, a sort of long-term girlfriend, mistress, anything like that?’ asked Emma.

  ‘None at all. And he never ordered flowers or took anyone out to lunch—except clients. Too mean, probably.’

  ‘You didn’t like him much, did you?’

  ‘No. I didn’t.’

  ‘Then why on earth did you stick it for so long?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Well, I’d been at Hill, Snow for ages and I’d only just been promoted to being a partner’s secretary when they sent me to him,’ said Annie. ‘They pay quite
well at that level, and I thought I couldn’t wimp out so quickly just because he could be such a bad-tempered sod. And then, as I say, there were times when he was charm itself. You couldn’t ever be sure it was real. You know, he’d appear to like you and then savage you for something that was his fault. But it always came back and while the balance was just on the side of more charm than soddery it seemed worth it. Then when Pipp died, I didn’t think I could abandon him.’

  ‘He felt it, did he?’

  ‘Well, of course he did,’ said Annie, looking astonished. ‘I mean, who wouldn’t? He was all over the place. I found him one morning, a few weeks after it happened, just sitting at his desk crying. He looked awful and I think he must have been banging his hands against the wall somewhere. They were bruised and his nails were filthy and all ragged. I felt so sorry for him. I haven’t ever had anything like that happen to me, but I’ve been miserable enough to understand what somebody might feel that would make them do that: you know, crash their fists into the walls and drag their fingernails over the bricks. There wasn’t anything I could do to help except put up with his temper as patiently as possible and hope that kindness would get through to him in the end. There wasn’t anything else anyone could have done.’

  ‘What about his wife?’

  ‘What about her?’ Annie asked with a hint of hostility.

  ‘Wasn’t there anything she could have done for him?’

  ‘Heavens no! She made it far worse. She flipped completely.’ Annie sounded contemptuous and then looked as though she had embarrassed herself. After a moment she added more kindly, ‘I mean, obviously it was awful for her, with her son dying like that, but she did make it far worse for poor old Andy. She was in such a state that he had to get her into a nursing home at one moment, a place that specialises in crisis care for private psychiatric patients. And then she went and ran away. Imagine how ghastly that must have been! He was at his wits’end until they found her. I think honestly it was the shock of him being arrested that made her realise what she’d been doing to him. She took a pull on herself then, but it was too late for him.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Emma, forgetting all her ambivalent feelings about Lutterworth in a surge of sympathy. ‘But what d’you mean about being too late?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve always thought that the state she left him in must have been why he behaved so bizarrely about the crash—you know, that he just wasn’t himself, and didn’t think what he was doing. I think he must have felt all the stuff about Pipp, who was a sweet boy, you know, and Jemima washing over him again, couldn’t bear the office, got the car, whizzed out on to the M40 without even planning where to go and not quite come to until he’d smashed into those people.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Emma. ‘I suppose I can imagine that happening. I wonder… Help, look at the time. I really honestly must go. You’ve been very helpful, Annie.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure. But…’ She broke off, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, if you should write anything up about all this you won’t say anywhere that I talked to you, will you?’

  ‘No. But why?’

  ‘It’s just I wouldn’t want Andy knowing that I’d gossiped about him,’ said Annie. ‘He’d… he’d be very pissed off.’

  ‘No, that’s all right,’ said Emma, thinking that Annie looked almost frightened and remembering Lutterworth’s stonelike eyes and harshly angry voice. ‘I won’t let on. Well, I have enjoyed talking to you. I hope the House suits you better than Hill, Snow did. ’Bye.’

  It was not until Emma was back in St Albans, aching with the effort of carrying her equipment back from the bus stop, that she found a note in her pigeonhole asking her to telephone Willow. Forgetting her stretched muscles, she hurried up the stairs to her room, almost tripping over a bunch of freesias. She unlocked the door of her room, dumped her kit, and went back for the flowers, tucking them under her arm so that she could open the note.

  It was from Hal, apologising for not having been available when she rang and giving the number of his flat. Noticing that he had scribbled ‘PTO’at the bottom of the small card, she turned it over to read:

  ‘I hope your call meant that you’re planning a trip to London. It would be great to see you. Do ring. Love, Hal.’

  She put the flowers in a jar of water, wondering how much of her urge to see him again was connected with her dislike of the conclusions Jag had drawn about her emotions. Then, impatient with her own inability to decide what she felt about anyone, she reached for the telephone. It was a relief to know that there was at least one person she could always trust, for whom she felt unalloyed affection.

  Tom answered the call, and Emma cried out with pleasure at his return, quickly asking how he had got on in Strasbourg. He answered her more shortly than usual and said he would fetch Willow.

  ‘Em? How are you?’

  ‘OK. Is Tom all right?’ Emma did not want to betray any of Mrs Rusham’s flustered confidences and she thought that Willow might expect her to comment on the fact that Tom had sounded so unlike himself.

  ‘He will be. He’s been in a bit of a sulk because he doesn’t like the idea that I’m helping you out on an investigation. For some reason he thinks I should’ve promised never to look into any crime ever again. But he’s finding his way out of the mood and we’ll be all right again pretty soon.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Emma. ‘I never meant to cause trouble.’

  ‘It’s not you, but we’d better not talk too long or it’ll look provocative.’

  ‘Absolutely, but you rang me. What was it you wanted me for?’

  ‘So I did,’ said Willow before giving her a quick but illuminating account of what she had heard from Susie Peatsea.

  Emma listened in silence and then, feeling even more confused, said, ‘So, Lutterworth didn’t have anything to do with the crash after all. What on earth can he be up to?’

  ‘We’ll have to find out,’ said Willow. ‘We can’t possibly drop it now. It’s got far too important. How did you get on with him today?’

  ‘Badly. I asked… Oh hell!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered that I was supposed to be ringing his wing governor between five thirty and six and I got waylaid. Look, Willow, there’s a lot to talk about, but I don’t want to provoke Tom. Are you likely to be on your own tomorrow? Could I ring you then?’

  ‘Good idea. I’ll be here pretending to work on the book all morning. Mrs R and Lucinda go to the park at about ten usually.’

  ‘I’ll try then, and just hope I don’t go and forget again. What a wally!’

  ‘Not a complete wally: just busy and preoccupied. I know the feeling. Don’t worry about it. I must go, but I have written you a long account of everything Susie said so that neither of us forgets anything crucial. You should get it tomorrow morning. ’Night.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Emma had hardly replaced the receiver before the telephone rang again. She picked it up and said her name.

  ‘Hi, Sunshine. It’s me, Jag. How are you?’

  ‘Knackered, to tell you the truth. I’ve been flogging about between here and the prison and London.’ She sighed. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Missing you. Can I come over? Are you too tired?’

  ‘I am a bit. Could we take a rain check tonight? Perhaps have coffee together tomorrow morning?’

  ‘OK. Whatever you want. Sleep well.’

  ‘Thanks, Jag. You, too.’

  She rearranged the freesias, revelling in the scent, and thought about Hal and Jag as she collected her dressing gown, towel and soap and went to find an empty bathroom.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days later Willow’s lively description of her meeting with Susie Peatsea reached Emma. Having read it, she knew that there could no longer be any doubt whatsoever that Andrew Lutterworth’s original story about the theft of his car had been accurate.

  That left Em
ma even more puzzled and wanting to talk to him again as soon as possible. All her dislike of the hardness she had seen in him, and the possibility of violence, was subsumed in her need to find out the truth.

  She made several efforts to reach the governor of his wing, but when she eventually got through on the telephone, she found him polite and even sympathetic over her failure to persuade Lutterworth to talk, but firm in his refusal to intervene. When she asked whether there was any information he could give her about Lutterworth’s state of mind, feelings about his son’s death or psychiatric reports, he sounded positively dismissive.

  ‘You can’t really have imagined that I would be able to hand over any such information, can you, Ms Gnatche?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. I am sorry to have taken up your time. Thank you for speaking to me. Goodbye.’

  Emma was left holding the dumb telephone and wishing that she had never rung the governor with such a silly request. Not only had she made herself look a fool, she had also risked losing his cooperation for the future.

  It was all extraordinarily frustrating. There were plenty of people who must know Lutterworth really well—the members of his parole board, his doctor, the prison psychiatrist, even his wife—but none of them was likely to tell Emma a single thing about him.

  Willow had said she thought the most important thing for either of them to do next was to track down Terry Lepe, but Emma was sure that for once Willow was definitely wrong. Susie’s account of the crash had convinced them both, and Emma could not see the point of trying to get confirmation from Terry, even if they managed to find him. As far as she could see, he was most unlikely to talk about the accident and might well react to any questions about it with the sort of violence he had shown Susie. The whole idea of risking that seemed mad, but Emma knew perfectly well that she would never be able to stop Willow doing anything she wanted. Emma was afraid that her role would have to be limited to controlling the possible damage.