Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs (A Harriet Martens Thriller Book 7)

by HRF Keating

  Another tiny hesitation.

  ‘One of us there was, in fact, a surgeon, one with a considerable reputation, comparatively young though he is. A chap called Jackson Edgeworth. So his opinion —’

  But Harriet interrupted.

  ‘I’ve been told Dr Edgeworth was —’

  A counter interruption now from Matthew Jessop.

  ‘Not Doctor. I told you: he’s a surgeon. He’s Mr Edgeworth.’

  Harriet felt a jounce of fury.

  How could I have fallen into such a solecism? However ridiculous it is to call surgeons, by custom, Mister, something I was even told about when I was at school.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Matthew Jessop began smoothly to go on.

  But Harriet cut in.

  ‘Mr Jessop, tell me. Is your Mr Edgeworth — What did you say you called your fellow ex-pupils? — a Zealot?’

  Something like a blush now on Jessop’s cat-neat features. ‘Yes. Yes, he was actually at the Zeal with myself and Rob. But that’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing. I was simply pointing out that his medical opinion would have been convincing to the authorities at St Oswald’s Hospital.’

  ‘I see. But I understand there were three of you there.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. There were three of us, though only myself and Jackson actually took Rob on to the clinic.’

  ‘But was the third person also a Zealot?’

  Jessop gave her a quick cold glance, almost a glare.

  ‘As a matter of fact he was. But that’s hardly strange. As I’ve indicated to you, people who were at the Zeal tend to stick together afterwards. We’ve all shared what you might call a unique experience.’

  ‘Very well. But who, actually, was this third Zealot?’

  A hesitation. Not the first.

  ‘He’s a chap called Drummond.’

  ‘That’s his proper name? Does he have a forename to go with it?’

  A visible change of mood in reaction to that, marked by another of those markedly genuine smiles.

  ‘You could say he has two forenames, if you like. He was actually christened Valentine, but he’s known to his friends, and sometimes to the gossip pages come to that, as Tigger. Name he got at school when, one term, he brought down with him a little mechanical tiger he’d put together. In fact he now runs a very successful firm making that thing called Tiger Man.’

  ‘Oh, I know about Tiger Man. Even years ago my sons each had an early model. The all-conquering mini-hero. So, it was Tiger Man who freed Robert Roughouse from his captors at St Ozzie’s?’

  Another smile from Jessop.

  ‘If you like to put it that way. Old Tigger may be just a toy manufacturer, but he’s a dab hand as an organiser. Always was, even at school. So it wasn’t surprising that he came along.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Your rapid action. But, tell me, why actually was it needed?’

  One more hesitation. This time even more prolonged.

  ‘Well, put it this way. It was obvious, even out there in Gralethorpe, that the missile that almost killed Rob was meant for him and nobody else. So, if that was the case, it might well be, we thought, that someone — whoever it had been in Gralethorpe — would make another attempt. Isn’t that reason enough for his friends to take what precautions they could?’

  Someone. That vague, Harriet thought. So it looks unlikely I’m going to find out from Jessop here anything about what was behind that attempt.

  ‘It didn’t occur to you,’ she said, ‘that Greater Birchester Police would have taken appropriate precautions in view of the possibility of a second attempt? I instigated them myself, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I wasn’t thinking very clearly after I left Gralethorpe. I simply rang a few friends to tell them what had happened, and the idea of taking Rob into safety just came up.’

  ‘All right. I suppose, if you all have the money you seem to have, you might decide between you on a private initiative. Though, I must say, it seems to me a bit over the top.’

  One more smile from Jessop, if not quite as warm as before.

  ‘Well, may I suggest it might seem over the top to you because you, even as a senior police officer, are not used to having the sort of money most of us Zealots happen to have. What are by ordinary standards large sums, even very large, don’t mean a great deal to most of us.’

  Harriet fought down her innate prejudices, perhaps as deep-seated as those of Bolshy Woodcock.

  Nevertheless, she thought, I do smell something a bit … a bit unpalatable here. Though I certainly can’t lay a finger on it. And, if what I’ve learnt about the money floating around in that circle means anything, there could be something there that made those three Zealots act. Would it be a reason of even more weight than providing safer protection to anything Greater Birchester Police offered?

  But none of all this can be other, just now, than pure speculation.

  So is there anything else to be cased out of Matthew Jessop, minor film producer?

  Yes, there’s this.

  ‘Mr Jessop, have you any idea, when all’s said and done, why anyone should have wanted to kill Robert Roughouse? Or perhaps to have him killed?’

  Matthew Jessop gave her, for a long moment, no answer. But then he shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I can’t find any answer to that. Of course, I’ve been asking myself why ever since they took poor Rob off to Birchester.’ A choked sort of laugh. ‘But rack my brains as I may, I cannot conceive of any answer.’

  Harriet looked at him.

  More to come? Why do I think that?

  Her mind stayed blank, and Jessop stayed silent.

  Time perhaps to go?

  All right, Jessop hasn’t always answered me with quite as much frankness as he might have done. Something surely a bit fishy there. Yet I very much doubt if he’ll give me the least bit more just now. But I’ll be back. If Matthew Jessop is my way forward, then he’s soon going to find himself face-to-face with me once more.

  Chapter Seven

  Harriet found Charity Nyambura’s flat was in a building just off the Portobello Road. A plaque over its door announced that it was owned by a housing trust and called Daley Thompson House, in honour of the record-breaking black athlete.

  OK, she said to herself, I see why Charity lives here. Coming from Kenya, probably with not a great deal of money, certainly not by London standards, what better place could she have found than this sort of shrine to a fellow black athlete?

  As she prepared to mount the steps up to the doors and buzz the entry-phone, something flicked at the edge of her vision. A man walking towards the Portobello market had come to a sudden standstill. The abrupt cessation of movement must have just caught her eye.

  Looking back for an instant, she saw the stock-still man was not at all the sort of person one might have expected to be going to the cheap and cheerful market ahead. Further along, where antiques were on sale, yes. But here, no. He had been, she realised even as he abruptly swung away into the side-street next door, altogether too well-dressed. An immaculate summer suit in a shade of butter-yellow, a pale blue shirt — glimpse of a smart striped tie? — and well-polished tan shoes, sun glinting off their toe-caps.

  For a moment she contemplated turning round and going to get a better look. But at once she decided it would be ridiculous. However out-of-place the man had looked, he must be no more than a chance passer-by who had suddenly remembered something.

  What’s he to me? Or I to him? What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?

  No, enough Shakespeare.

  She trotted quickly up the steps of Daley Thompson House and thumbed the entry-phone for Flat 9.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a distinctly African voice.

  Harriet identified herself and was told to come up to the top floor.

  There, she found the flat’s door wide open and a young black woman in a white top and jeans, the latter plainly tight-stretched by muscular legs.

  Yet, despite a wide,
welcoming smile, Charity Nyambura, she thought, seems clearly to be fighting back some deep underlying anxiety.

  ‘Come in. Just go through, straight ahead. You want a coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  Charity popped into the kitchenette next to the door and flipped down the switch on a green kettle.

  ‘Sweetener suit you? I don’t have nothing else. Have to watch the weight. But there’s plenty of milk.’

  ‘Milk’ll be fine,’ Harriet, who detested pills in her coffee, answered quickly. In the room she had stepped into she made, once again, her customary survey.

  Less to take in here than over at Matthew Jessop’s elegant little house, a good deal less. The room was not large, though with its plain walls colour-washed in pale orange and big radiator painted in the same shade, it was airy and pleasant. Not a great deal of furniture, a small sofa in plain grey-green leatherette and two rather narrow armchairs in the same material — Harriet thought she had seen such three-piece suites in many a shop-window — and wall-to-wall carpeting worn enough to have been laid when Daley Thompson House was first built. Otherwise almost nothing to take note of except, hanging on the wall opposite the two large uncurtained windows, a wood carving of a male African face, broad-nosed, deep-eyed, a little threatening.

  Charity came in, once more smiling, mug of coffee in each hand. Something then decided Harriet to go straight in.

  ‘I saw you on Wednesday at the Masterton Clinic outside Birchester,’ she said.

  And got a reaction. The smile on Charity’s boot-polish brown face slowly fading away.

  ‘OK, I was there.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  Charity’s guarded look became yet more wary.

  ‘You ought to know why I was there,’ she said. ‘That detective who questioned me must have been with you. So, let me tell you, 1 didn’t at all like the way he spoke to me. All right, I’m black, and maybe I have to expect hassle from the police sometimes. But he just went too far.’

  Bloody bloody Bolshy, Harriet thought. Didn’t 1 tell him he wasn’t to press her? So what did he do? Gave her a hard time. Still, I suppose I should have been more explicit in tasking him, seeing the way he’s so prejudiced.

  ‘Look,’ she said to Charity, ‘I must apologise.’ She checked herself: no name, no official complaint. ‘That officer should certainly never have spoken to you otherwise than strictly politely. I never gave him any instructions that might have authorised anything else.’

  The smile returned, if not as broadly as before.

  ‘All right,’ Harriet went on. ‘You were at the Masterton to see Robert Roughouse, if you could. And you did see him. But did you tell my sergeant everything that occurred when you were inside there? Was Robert in fact able to say something, anything at all?’

  ‘No. No, he wasn’t. What I told your bullyboy was the simple truth. When I came into Rob’s room I saw straightaway he was totally unconscious, and he never opened his eyes and hardly even stirred the whole time I was there.’

  ‘But all the same you did get to see him,’ she went on. ‘So, tell me, how was it you were allowed right in there, when earlier I had the devil of a time even getting to see the Administrator? And on police business?’

  Charity suddenly grinned.

  ‘Simple,’ she said. ‘Tonelle on Reception’s an old friend.’

  And then came a sudden close-down.

  Harriet pretended not to notice. But something here, she thought, not quite as might be expected?

  ‘So that accounts for it,’ she said easily. ‘And I suppose you never even saw that dragon, Mrs Fishlock?’

  Another grin, if a little more slow to come.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t. Tonelle told me where to find Rob, and I just went along there, slipped into the room and told the nurse on duty I’d got permission. But, hey, sit down, sit down. Can’t have you standing there, about to tip coffee all over the carpet. Not that it’d matter. Grubby old thing, here in the flat when I got it.’

  Harriet lowered herself into one of the narrow armchairs, while Charity slid gracefully into the other.

  ‘Look,’ Harriet said to her, ‘the reason I’m here is that we in the police have really no idea why Robert was attacked. Nothing’s come to light. So, you know him well, can you give me any idea about any enemies he might have? Or whether he’s done something — anything — that might make somebody want … want him not to be here any more?’

  ‘No. No, no. There’s nothing, — er — Superintendent.’

  ‘Oh, drop the rank and all that. It’s Harriet.’

  ‘OK, Harriet. Well, we met, Rob and I — it was quite a long time ago, actually — at one of those big parties they held to whip up interest in London’s bid for the Olympics. And … and we just took to each other straightaway, in spite of being so different. And not only in our ages, nearly twenty years between us, you know. I mean there’s me, a Kenyan girl from nowhere at all, and there’s Rob, kind of ruling class, like in the old days when they all dressed up specially to eat their dinner. Always said they had to do that, you know, though God knows who’d told them to.’

  ‘But did Rob ever say anything to you, even the least hint, that, looking back, might give you an idea of why anyone should want him dead?’

  ‘No, hardly a word,’ Charity said. ‘That’s the trouble, really. If I knew anything, if I had the least idea, I’d not feel so awful. Had a terrible day training yesterday.’

  ‘I can imagine. You’ve got an event coming up?’

  ‘Yeah, a ten-thousand metres at Manchester in a couple of weeks. If I can get fit enough. You have to keep at top level all the time, you know. And …’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  Again a silence. Something she’s trying to recollect? Something half-buried in her mind?

  ‘No, he never said anything. Not a word.’

  ‘But tell me about yourself and Rob,’ Harriet said, groping for more. ‘You said you’ve known him quite a long time.’

  Charity’s nose abruptly wrinkled up in a what-the-hell grimace.

  ‘Suppose there’s no harm in telling you really,’ she said. ‘Rob and I are lovers, though I hope you won’t go blabbing to the papers about it.’

  ‘To the papers? I promise you the thought would never enter my mind. I’m not too keen on those people. So that means you and Rob see a good deal of each other?’

  ‘Oh, we do. We do. Most nights, matter of fact.’

  ‘Good. And does he tell you then about what he’s been doing during the day?’

  ‘Well, it’s funny, but he doesn’t really. Or not all that much. We’ve got other things to talk about, you know. And in some ways Rob’s a bit cagey. I mean, I know a lot about when he was a boy, the family house and that, and about his travels, like the ones he wrote that book about, Marching Through Georgia.’

  ‘Ah, yes. I’ve heard of that. In fact … I suppose I couldn’t borrow your copy? I’d give you a receipt, of course, and see you got it back as soon as I’d finished it.’

  A look of what might be a pang of misery came on Charity’s bright brown face.

  ‘Rob never gave me one,’ she said. ‘Though I’ve asked him often enough.’

  Alertness sprang up in Harriet’s mind.

  ‘That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, Rob is odd about some things. I mean, there’s stuff I hardly know anything at all about. That Innovation Party he’s started up — Rob hardly mentions it — and, even more, there’s a little bunch of his school friends he almost never talks about, a sort of secret-ish club. They call it something. Rob said it, just once. Yeah, the Cobbles, I think that’s what he said. But he never says the least thing about it. Only, he told me once, they invented a whole set of rules for themselves. Ones they’re sworn to keep to. Bit silly, it seemed to me. Little boys’ game. But, of course, I didn’t say that to Rob.’

  ‘So there’s really nothing he ever said that makes you think he could have ac
quired an enemy who, that night in Gralethorpe, launched that attack on him?’

  ‘No. No, really I can’t think of anything. I know it’s strange, when we’re so close really. But Rob has got some funny ways. I think it’s that crazy school he went to. What a place. I mean, almost all Rob’s friends from there are a bit odd. And the man who’s president or something of the whole outfit — the Zealots they call themselves — he’s a real nutter. A judge, I think, he is. Somebody Cotmore. Certainly rules the roost like he’s a judge. Rob even Yes, sirs when he’s talking to him.’

  ‘I find that a little hard to picture. Not much like the Robert Roughouse I saw berating that crowd of anti-hunt protesters.’

  ‘Oh, Rob’s only like that when he puts on his Zealot hat — well, Zealot tie actually, big red and white stripes. That’s when he gets all stiff and silly.’

  ‘That’s men all oven,’ Harriet said.

  In the companionable silence that followed she wondered if perhaps she had learnt all she could from Charity. But then that moment of shut-down when Charity had said she and Tonelle were old friends came back to her mind. It was more than a little curious. How could a Kenyan athlete living in London and a girl working at a clinic in distant Birrshire be old friends? It isn’t as if Tonelle, ebony black, looks in any way like this boot-polish brown Kenyan. And Tonelle, from her speech and fly knowledge of the scene, is clearly British-born, perhaps even second generation.

  ‘Tell me,’ she cautiously asked Charity, ‘how does it happen that you know the Masterton as well as you seem to?’

  Charity bit her lower lip.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she said, after a silence that seemed to have lasted almost a whole minute, ‘I was there as a patient once. It — It’s got quite a reputation for — for treating sports injuries, you know.’

  A quick look, as if to see how that had gone down.

  Harriet, who had no idea what sort of medicine the Masterton practised, let Charity assume that what she had said raised no doubts.

  ‘Reputation for that, has it?’ she said. ‘I don’t know much about the place, except that it’s there.’