One May Smile
Page 20
No-one comes in and I start to wonder if the ladies’ loos are next door and if he might think that I’m in there. He can’t go in there, can he? So he’ll hang around outside, waiting for me, which means that he’ll see me if I come out of here too, so all I can do is stay here and hope that the police arrive eventually and pick him up. If only, I reflect bitterly, I had my phone, it would all be so simple, and I hate Anders Mortensen, at this moment, more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life. These speculations don’t last long, however. If Ray made an error, he soon realised it because now I hear him slam in through the door and bang a hard fist on my cubicle.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Gina?’ he shouts and I hold my breath, which is a good thing to do anyway because the air in here is fairly unpleasant and some of that is my sweat, which I can feel trickling down my back and under my arms. I allow myself a brief pang of regret for my nice new green linen dress which, should I survive this episode, may never be wearable again. Ray bangs again and I see the door shake, It’s very flimsy this little cubicle of mine, and the bolt is feeble. It won’t take more than one good shove for Ray to be in here. I brace myself, but then I hear voices. Others have come in to use the facilities. I see Ray’s feet move away. I crouch in my uncomfortable posture, listening. Only you, Gina, I think. Only you could end up being in danger of your life in a men’s lavatory. If I survive, this is a story I feel I shall not want to tell.
The other men leave – I see their feet go by me – and then Ray follows them out. What is he playing at now? I don’t have long to think about it. It’s not more than five minutes before the door swings open and I see two pairs of official feet come to a rest outside my hutch. Chunky black lace-ups they are, regulation footwear designed to accessorise the uniforms of officialdom. My heart lifts. Policemen. They’ve come for me.
‘Hello?’ I call, sounding ridiculous. ‘Are you the police?’
An answer of sorts comes back but it’s in Danish and is accompanied by a fairly unfriendly bashing at the door.
‘Do you speak English?’ I call and there is further bashing at the door. I see it strain at its bolt and thinking that if it’s sent crashing in and is followed by a large policeman I can hardly escape serious injury, I unbolt it and step outside.
They are not policemen. They are, I see, security staff, and from the aggressive way one of them takes hold of my arm and from the expression on Ray’s face when I am led out into the corridor, I deduce that he has summoned them to remove me from this place where I don’t belong and to escort me from the building. A clever ruse, I have to grant him that. Puzzlingly, though, we set off at a brisk pace in the opposite direction from the UDGANG signs. I attempt an explanation of my situation to my captors in the hope that I might yet get help from them, but I am breathless with panic and the speed at which we’re moving and anyway they don’t seem to understand a word I’m saying. Stonily silent, they march me deeper into the bowels of the hospital and it dawns on me that it would be bad PR for people to be seen being thrown out of the hospital’s front doors, so I’m to be evicted via the back exit, where I shall be dumped among the bins and surgical detritus and where Ray, doggedly pursuing us, will be free do whatever he likes with me unobserved. I redouble my efforts to get the security men to consider my security but it’s too late. We’re outside, they’re letting go of me and they’re back inside ready to harass someone else. And here comes Ray. I can think of nothing I can do. It would be useless to run even if my legs were up to it. I just stand and wait.
Since there’s no-one else around, the coercion doesn’t have to be covert this time. He takes my arm and twists it up my back in a way that makes me scream without having to think about it. He claps a hand over my mouth and I bite it, wondering stupidly, as I taste blood, if I might have infected myself with HIV. He responds to the bite by twisting my arm even further, I scream again and we seem set to go on like this except that suddenly something hits him violently from behind and he keels over, dragging me down with him. I hit my head and lie with my eyes closed, unable to move. I can hear sounds of a struggle, though, and a lot of swearing and the clink of something metallic. A constrained voice, the voice of someone still engaged in a struggle, calls out, ‘Are you all right, Gina?’ and I open my eyes and raise myself a bit with my good arm to look about me.
Ray is lying face down on the ground, still thrashing about with his feet, and David is on top of him with a knee in the small of his back, snapping handcuffs on him in a terribly efficient manner.
‘Well, shining armour after all,’ I say as a police car comes screaming round the corner.
18
INTERROGATION
‘What I don’t understand,’ Gina said as Scott drove her to the police station, ’is how you knew I would be there – out at the back, I mean.’ She turned to look at him. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘you know absolutely nothing about police procedure and you never bother to find out. You think we just bumble along, don’t you? It doesn’t occur to you that we have protocols.’
‘Protocols,’ she said. ‘Lovely word. What sort of protocols?’
‘For example, we always cover the front and the back of a building.’
‘OK.’ She looked out of the window. ‘So it was just chance that it was you who came round the back? It could just as easily have been Anders Mortensen who saved me?’
‘Absolutely.’
She was quiet and he glanced at her. Her face was dirty and grazed, bruising was starting to show on her bare arm, and her smart new dress was crumpled and stained with patches of sweat. ‘He wouldn’t have done it so well, though,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s older than me and he doesn’t work out, and he doesn’t love you.’
She looked at him for a moment then turned back to the window. ‘Bugger you,’ she said. ‘You’ve made me cry.’
‘It’ll do you good,’ he said. ‘Release of tension.’
She was quiet again. Then she looked back at him. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ’how do you know he doesn’t love me?’
‘Just guessing,’ he said.
*
At the police station, she was cleaned up, given a cup of tea, checked over and advised to get the bump on her head seen at the hospital – advice which sent her into slightly hysterical laughter. Mortensen asked her for a detailed account of events at the hospital but declined to discuss her insights regarding Ray Porter. Scott drove her back to the Marienlyst, ordered room service sandwiches and, without consulting her, called Annie. When Annie arrived, he returned to the police station, where Mortensen had considerately waited for him before interviewing Ray Porter.
He had, instead, questioned James Asquith again. Asquith, he said, had acknowledged that Porter was employed by his father. My minder, he had said. Why had he not mentioned this before? Because he had never been asked, he said. His father, he elaborated, had been worried about his spending time in Denmark and possibly getting some publicity as he was playing Hamlet. Since the emergence of the Harmony Party, Bruce Asquith had been receiving regular anti-Islamic hate mail and the furore over the Danish Muhammad cartoons had unnerved him as far as his son’s trip to Elsinore was concerned. Ray was picked because he was young enough to pass as a student. Obviously, they didn’t want the others to know why he was there so James had suggested that he did the lighting for the show. He was good at that practical stuff and Adam had been desperate. He had never actually pretended to be a student – their story, if asked, was that they’d met in a pub but, as far as he knew, nobody had asked.
Questioned about Conrad’s attempts at blackmail, he had shrugged them off. Conrad, he said, was crazy about playing Hamlet and had gone over the top with his threats about revealing what had happened to Karin, but Karin had been very grown-up about it and assured him that she had no intention of stirring things up. Yes, her brother had been more awkward and Bruce Asquith had provided the
money to pay him off. Personally, he didn’t grudge him the money: Karin had been badly treated and her brother had looked after her. And if some of the money went Karin’s way that would be even better. Told that Jonas Møller had returned the money after Conrad’s death, he had looked surprised. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Ray acted as go-between with Jonas. He must have dealt with it.’
When Mortensen asked him if he had ever wondered if Porter might have been responsible for Conrad’s death and for the attack on Sophie, he had laughed it off. What motive could he have any more than he, James, had? Conrad was no threat because Karin was no threat, and as for Sophie, what harm could she do? Asked if Ray Porter had as sanguine a view of the threat from Conrad as he did, he had admitted that he had been more wound up about it but that seemed to be a lot about making the minding job more exciting; just spending time with a bunch of students putting on a play didn’t feel macho enough for him.
‘And your father?’ Mortensen had asked. ‘How worried was he about it?’ Asquith had looked away from him then. ‘I really don’t know,’ he had said. ‘I didn’t speak to him. Ray did all the reporting in. I don’t have a phone chat relationship with my father.’
‘Well,’ Scott said, when Mortensen relayed this, ‘you’re going to have to have a talk with Sir Bruce, aren’t you, even if his son doesn’t? Though it may be hard to make anything stick on him. ‘Always thought that I require a clearness’.’
‘What’s that?’ Mortensen asked.
‘Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth orders two murderers to kill a man he thinks is a threat to him. ‘But some way from the palace,’ he says, ‘always thought that I require a clearness.’
‘You are fond of Shakespeare?’ Mortensen asked.
‘I studied Macbeth for an Advanced Level English exam. Taught by Gina Gray, as a matter of fact.’
Mortensen gave him a long look. ‘OK,’ he said. ’Well, let’s get to work on Porter.’
As they walked down corridors towards the interview room, Scott asked, ‘What do you think of Asquith’s story?’
‘I think if he knew Porter was guilty he would have told us so from the start. He wasn’t likely to sit in a cell here in order to protect the man who was supposed to be protecting him, was he?’
‘Equally, how come Porter was willing to let Asquith get arrested? That can’t have gone down well with Bruce Asquith, can it?’
‘Well, I’ve thought about that. If Porter knew he was the guilty one, he’d know too that we would find no real evidence against Asquith and we’d have to let him go. I am surprised, though, that Bruce Asquith hasn’t been more active on his son’s behalf.’
‘Someone from the embassy came, didn’t they?’
‘One phone call. No-one came. And no lawyer. No personal approach.’
‘’A clearness’,’ Scott said.
*
They found Ray Porter in a surprisingly bullish mood for a man who had been charged with murder and attempted murder and had been arrested in the course of assaulting a witness. He leaned back on two legs of his chair, arms clasped behind his head, challenging them to do their worst. Offered the presence of a lawyer, he refused. ‘If you prosecute me,’ he said, ‘you’d better be sure of your evidence because I shall have the best legal team in the UK on my case and they’ll make mincemeat of you.’
‘Well,’ Mortensen said amiably, ‘we shall see.’
He settled himself comfortably in his chair and opened a file in front of him. ‘Karin Møller,‘ he said, ‘has been to see us. She told us the whole story – her relationship with Bruce Asquith, the blackmail attempt by Conrad Wagner, the threats made against her and the incident in which a white van deliberately knocked her off her bike.’
He paused and Scott looked at him. Karin Møller had been able to tell them nothing about the vehicle that hit her. Was Mortensen’s claim about the white van just a bluff or did he have information unknown to Scott?
Mortensen tapped his file. ‘So, we have a scenario: Conrad Wagner, Sophie Forrester and Karin Møller all knew the story – a story that discredits Bruce Asquith at a very sensitive time – and all had to be silenced. Am I right?’
‘You tell me. Show me your evidence. I’m not doing your bloody job for you.’
‘OK. Let us,’ Mortensen suggested, ‘set aside the question of Conrad Wagner’s death for the present.’
Ray laughed. ‘Yes, why don’t you? You won’t pin that on me and you know it. Because I didn’t do it. I was nowhere near that car and didn’t touch the brakes. If you had anything on me for that, I’d be the one you’d have had in a cell here the past three days, not Jim Asquith, so don’t give me any blather over that.’
‘As I say, we will set that aside for the moment and consider Sophie Forrester, who is conscious now and has made a statement to one of my officers in which she states quite clearly that it was you who pushed her into the castle moat. Strong evidence, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Oooh.’ Ray pursed his lips in exaggerated concern. ‘She had a nasty knock on the head, didn’t she? Out cold for three days. Can’t tell facts from dreams, I wouldn’t wonder. My lawyers would soon dispose of that. Sorry. Not good enough.’
‘Are you denying that you pushed her or just questioning the evidence?’ Mortensen asked.
‘Absolutely no bloody comment.’
‘Actually,’ Mortensen said, ‘we do have independent evidence. Given a photograph of you to jog his memory, the castle gatekeeper remembers a man very much like you asking for the key of the wine cellar shortly after the fall, and we have found your fingerprints on Sophie’s phone, which she left with her clothes in the wine cellar. What did you want that phone for, I wonder?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You needed to delete the text message you sent her, didn’t you? The one that was supposed to have come from Asquith? You didn’t want to incriminate Asquith – that was the last thing you wanted. I should imagine your employer is very annoyed with you about that. You look surprised. Oh yes, we know all about your role as protection for Asquith. A poor job you made of it, I’m afraid.’
‘A pity for you you didn’t throw the phone away,’ Scott chipped in, ‘like the one you used to send the text. Didn’t you know that a deleted message can be retrieved from a SIM card? You don’t have be in a police lab to do it – anyone can. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.’
Porter shot him a look of pure hate, and then turned to Mortensen. ‘I really hope you do prosecute, you know. It’ll be a pleasure to see my legal team get to work on you.’
The door of the interview room opened and a uniformed policewoman came in with a message. Mortensen looked at it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have found the garage that repaired your van.’
‘Really?’
‘And it turns out you were unlucky.’ He passed the message across to Scott. ‘We don’t generally find that the public go out of their way to help us but you took the van to one garage where the owner used his brain and wanted to be helpful. You made him suspicious, it seems, with your story about how the van got damaged and why you weren’t claiming on insurance. He replaced the damaged panel but he kept the old one, and the paint on it matches exactly the paint of Karin Møller’s bike.’
Porter stopped swinging his chair and sat up straight. ‘I reckon it’s time I had my one phone call,’ he said. ‘You do have that here, do you – the right to make one phone call?’
‘Be my guest,’ Mortensen said, indicating the phone clamped to the wall.
‘Do I get any privacy?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Porter patted the pocket of his jeans. ‘I’ll need my phone. The number I need’s on there.’
‘Well, your phone is in the lab now,’ Mortensen said, ‘but if you tell me who you wish to phone we can find the number for you.’
Porter laughed. ‘Not this one you can’t,’ he said. ‘This is Sir Bruce Asquith’s private number I want. You won’t find that anywhere.’
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Anya? It’s Ray Porter here. Can you let me have the boss’s number? I haven’t got access to my phone and I need to speak to him urg – what do you mean, can’t talk to me? He’s got to hear what I’ve got to say. Where is he? No, don’t give me in a meeting. Get him out of the meeting then. Look, I’ve been arrested. You’ve got to tell him this is a mayday situation.’