by Janet Neel
‘It might be entirely business.’
‘Indeed. But our information is good, and they have been passing the night together.’
A lot to be said, Catherine thought, for a country as heavily policed as Spain, where waiters and chambermaids, no doubt, routinely kept the Garda informed. This, too, needed to be passed back to London as quickly as possible.
They finished lunch with mutual compliments, and she went back to find the phone ringing in her room. It was Bruce Davidson, sounding annoyed.
‘Are you sure about Friday, Catherine? He wasn’t on any of the scheduled flights.’
‘No, I can’t be sure. Have you tried the charters? They’re not above giving people a ride if they’ve got a space. He’ll be logged as “returning crew” or something like that.’
‘I do know and we’ll be moving on to that. And the private planes, but I wanted to know how good your evidence was.’
‘Risk it,’ she advised, and told him about her conversation at lunch. The wine at lunch had left her feeling sleepy and ineffective in the pleasantly warm afternoon, so she put her feet up and went to sleep on the disconcerting thought that Luke Fleming might have been attending a meeting at the airport and not getting a plane at all. The phone woke her with a jerk.
‘He came in on an executive jet, with Wimpey people in it. I remembered he’d worked for them, so we got on to it quickly. And I’ve put someone on to checking Fleming’s dealings with his exwife, because we know where she is. Well done, Catherine. Soon as the Guv’nor gets back from hobnobbing with Members of Parliament I’ll tell him and we’ll go and see Mr Fleming.’
‘Can’t you reach John?’
‘Not until he’s back in the car. I’ll make sure he knows it was you who was so clever, don’t you worry.’
*
John McLeish sipped coffee and waited while Miles Arnold MP fussed round the room. It was a rather nasty office, small and cluttered, with mean windows and the inevitable noise of a secretarial office audible through the walls, well below the standards of accommodation at New Scotland Yard and most regional forces.
‘Sorry. Just getting rid of this lot.’ Miles Arnold, looking too large for the office, brushed past him with a tray of papers, and returned, looking at a couple of messages. ‘Good of you to come here, I have to be in the House in an hour.’
‘That’s all right,’ McLeish said, and waited again.
Miles Arnold had rung him that morning, asking if they could meet. McLeish had met Jim Waters, the Private Secretary to the Chief Whip, for the promised drink and aired his problem; an MP who, if not First Suspect in a murder case, was at least on the list, and who had offered a not very credible version of his whereabouts.
‘And you don’t think he was sitting at home with the constituency post and a dictating machine?’ Jim had asked. ‘More of them doing that on a Friday night than you might expect, if you read the tabloids.’
‘I’m not sure, no. I just got a whisper that, wife and children being absent, he was likely to be doing something more interesting.’
‘Or someone more interesting. And you don’t want to call him a liar.’ Jim Waters had sat nursing his drink which looked like gin and tonic and was, in fact, Perrier water with ice and lemon. McLeish waited too, watching as that experienced shrewd intelligence reviewed the options.
‘If there were an explanation which left him in the clear you would be heartily relieved and see no need to make waves. And you would deal with the whole thing yourself.’
‘I would, I would.’
‘Leave it with me.’
They had talked of other things for the measured forty minutes which was what Jim Waters allowed himself for seeing seekers of help or patronage who were also friends. And eleven days later, the time lag caused by Miles Arnold’s absence abroad, McLeish was hoping to put another piece of the jigsaw securely in place. Arnold was having difficulty getting started but the ball was in his court; there was no way of helping him pick it up.
‘More coffee?’
McLeish accepted obligingly and took the biscuit pressed on him as the man finally managed to get himself sat down.
‘I understand that you weren’t happy with my statement.’ He wasn’t looking at McLeish, who did not attempt an answer. ‘I wasn’t trying to mislead you. I really was at home – in the flat – from late on Friday night, so I still don’t have an alibi for the time that I could see you were thinking about.’ He managed finally to look at McLeish who made an indeterminate noise of encouragement.
‘But to set your – the police’s – mind at rest, I will tell you where I was. I am very anxious not to create, well, unnecessary waves, but I understand you do feel you have to know.’ He was sounding ill used, and McLeish wondered what made him feel that he ought to be immune from procedures whose application to the rest of the citizenry would have his hearty public support. ‘I was with a girl – a woman. At her flat. Until about midnight.’ He let out a wholly unconscious sigh of relief and reached for some more coffee.
‘On Saturday evening as well?’ McLeish asked, and watched the coffee jug jump in Miles Arnold’s hand.
‘I thought it was Friday night you were interested in. Wasn’t Bill dead by Saturday night?’
‘Yes. But there is some evidence … some indication that someone may have been in at a later stage. Like Saturday. So we would be glad to know where you were on Saturday evening as well.’
‘I was with the same person.’
‘Who is?’
‘Will you have to talk to her?’ He saw the answer in McLeish’s face. ‘All right, yes you do, I see … but could you … well, be careful? And go by yourself? I mean, don’t take anyone else.’ He looked across the table. ‘I suppose it’ll all be on a file. Part of the case. Do we have to do this? Given that it doesn’t even give me an alibi. Or not for Friday. Saturday I spent the whole night there.’
‘But you returned home on Friday.’
‘Ah. That. Yes.’ He looked away. ‘The thing is, you see, that I’ve got an answerphone at the flat. One of the sort you can ring and pick up messages. There was a message from … from my wife, saying she had rung and would ring again around midnight. Something about the children. I rang her – she was staying with her parents. She was out somewhere with her father and her mother wasn’t helpful, so I thought I’d better go back to the flat. To be there when she called.’
‘And did she in fact ring you?’
‘Yes, just as I told you. At about quarter to one. With some nonsense about music lessons that could perfectly well have waited. But you could check that.’
‘Indeed we could.’ And that the phone did not have a device which would trip the call on to another phone. Perhaps he should suggest one such for future reference as it were. ‘And you didn’t go out again after you’d spoken to your wife?’
‘Go back, you mean? I only wish I had. Not only would I have had a nicer night but I’d now have an alibi. Or wouldn’t I? Depends on how long the whole thing took, I suppose. I didn’t go back because … well, I dunno, but I thought she – my wife – was a bit suspicious and might just ring again, or pop up first thing. I was feeling paranoid, I suppose. It’s the press – we’ve all got a bit jumpy. I’m not alone, you know.’
‘And Saturday?’
‘Saturday I took the risk. I checked the phone at midnight. No messages, and I thought if she did ring later, well, I could then say I’d gone to bed and didn’t hear the phone. You know. The person – girl – I had left on Friday wanted me to stay.’
He was looking pleased with himself, McLeish observed, and wondered if he himself would manage to cope with a mistress as well as Francesca.
‘I shall need to talk to the person in question,’ he said, deciding that if he sounded pompous he did not care. ‘But by all means ring her yourself and ask her to get in touch with me if that is easier.’
Miles Arnold looked suddenly tired. ‘None of this is easy. The whole situation is a bit tense, as yo
u can imagine.’ He hesitated, looking at the table, the long fingers clasped round one knee. ‘Susie – Susie James, that’s her name – is a bit pissed off with me, naturally, for involving her.’ He uncrossed his legs, and bounced to his feet, convulsively, discharging tension. ‘She’s out, I know, for the rest of the day and … well … it could be embarrassing if you had to see her. She’s with clients. But tomorrow morning she’ll be at home, I know, if that would suit.’
McLeish indicated that it would, and seeing Arnold glance at the phone offered to wait outside. Any collusion between Miles Arnold and Miss James had taken place long since, and there was no harm in observing the simple courtesies. He nodded to the secretary who obligingly exchanged a few platitudes with him about the weather without stopping working. It was, they agreed, miserably cold and rainy, particularly for so late in April.
‘Mr McLeish.’ He smiled encouragingly at Miles Arnold who emerged from the office flushed around the cheekbones. ‘She’s expecting you – oh, you don’t have the address.’ He looked helplessly at his secretary who tapped two buttons on the computer and printed out the result without asking whose address was wanted. Jim Waters had always said the House of Commons secretaries knew everything; it appeared to be true. In a small society, more people knew about you than you could bear to think about.
His car was parked just outside the Derby gates and the uniformed constable in the police box saluted him as he passed, drawing curious looks from two men with House of Commons passes round their necks.
‘Three messages, sir.’
He discarded two and rang Bruce Davidson. ‘Fleming was here on the Friday? Really.’ He listened to the rest of the story, and thought, staring unseeing into the door of the Range Rover next to them. ‘No. No, I don’t want to talk to him until we’ve got it all. Get on to Records, sort out what he was divorced for and so on. He isn’t going anywhere.’
Annabelle Brewster looked at the list of patients waiting to see her. Most of the names were familiar even after only four months in the practice, because the partners tended to give her the repeaters, the people who because of age or loneliness haunted the surgery. This was partly in the hope that a fresh, recently trained eye would help and Annabelle had indeed scored a couple of successes, by changing and cutting down the barrage of medicines that three of the older patients had acquired over the years. It was also to provide a new person for the sad, the mad, and the chronically ill to tell their stories to. She longed, nearly all the time now, for the children in hospital who had been really ill but had borne their burdens with such grace and who often could be cured.
‘Mr Sutherland,’ she called, impersonally, to the crowded room and stared as Matthew Sutherland stood up, grinning, in a pink shirt that shouted at his dark red hair and enlivened the several grey or black layers he wore over it. He had another man in tow.
‘Francis?’ she said, doubtfully.
Francis Price looked almost unrecognisably less haggard than she remembered him. She pulled the door shut, recalling that he was no longer a patient of the practice, having been delisted after a violent episode in the waiting-room over a year ago.
‘We need a doctor and I thought of you.’ Matthew was sitting on the edge of her desk, observing her carefully as she sat firmly down on her chair behind the desk to give herself the authority of her position.
‘Matt, Francis was delisted here.’
‘I know. But he doesn’t have a doctor – except Antony – and things have changed. He’s off smack, did it cold turkey, but he’s got a fucking awful chest. I take it you’re not going to pass by on the other side?’
Annabelle had hooked her auscultator round her neck even while Matt was speaking. She got Francis to take off his jacket and sweater and open his shirt – one of Matt’s gaudier offerings. Francis was shivering even in the warm room, but he breathed when she told him and managed to cough on demand.
‘Bronchitis,’ she said, having checked his ears and his throat. ‘I’ll give you a seven-day course of antibiotics, Francis, and you must stay in an even temperature. Is your room warm enough?’
‘I’m staying with Matt.’
‘My room’s fine,’ Matt said, apologetically. ‘I took him out for a health-giving walk a couple of days ago. Mistake.’
‘You have to be careful coming off drugs,’ Annabelle said sternly to Francis, then caught herself up and looked at him properly. He looked very tired and a bit flushed, but … well, ordinary, human, not far away from the world and its concerns, or fidgeting and sweating as she had always seen him before. ‘Do you need anything else, Francis? Painkillers?’
‘I’m so full of Anadin I rattle,’ he said, smiling at her, and she paused, transfixed because he looked so like Antony when she had first known him.
‘They’re a bit hard on the stomach. I’ll give you something else, but you mustn’t take more than eight in twenty-four hours.’ She looked sideways at Matt. ‘Will that work? Is that enough?’
‘Just about. He could do with some more tranks.’
‘Valium?’
‘Yeah. I won’t let him take them too long but it’s difficult for him to sleep. It’ll help with the cramps.’
‘I just need to look up the dose.’ She reached for a book and became conscious of a charged silence between the two young men.
‘Francis, will you be okay in the waiting-room for ten minutes? I want to talk to Annabelle.’
‘About me?’
‘No. About her.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but Francis shook his head at her. ‘I may be looking like shit, Anna, but you’re not looking too good either. See you in ten minutes, Matt. Not more or I’ll have finished the last Woman’s Own.’ He got unsteadily to his feet, smiled at her and went, leaving her gaping after him.
‘Matthew, he looks quite different.’
‘He acts quite different, you mean. Being a druggie fucks up all your behaviour.’
‘I suppose I’ve never seen him when he wasn’t out of it one way or the other.’ She looked across the desk at Matthew, who slid into Francis’s chair. ‘Well, you’ve done quite a job there,’ she said, rushing into speech. ‘How long has he been clean?’
‘Ten days.’
‘What are you going to do with him next?’
‘I’ve kitted him up with a decent lawyer, who will take his trustees – or rather the surviving one – to court and make a claim on the estate, or rather the executors, one of whom is his stepmother, that’s why I couldn’t ask Peter to take him on. The bloke I’ve got – Thomas – is good. He’s already put in a statement of claim; prior to a writ if no one takes any notice. Sylvia Price is very upset, I understand. Obviously hoped all hubby’s problems died with him.’
‘Are you going to send Antony to the same lawyer?’
‘No.’
It was definitive and she looked at him enquiringly. He looked back unsmiling, and she felt suddenly utterly exhausted as if her spine was melting. He reached across the table and took her hands in his own.
‘You’ve got enormous hands,’ she said, too tired to move, comforted by the warmth.
‘Butcher’s hands, my mum says. Dad has them too.’
‘What does your dad do?’ She was talking just to prolong the moment of peace.
‘He’s a doctor. Specialises in kids.’
She realised that she was going to cry, and tugged her hands free and reached blindly for the Kleenex, so she could snuffle and weep and blow her nose and give in to the awful weariness which she felt all the time. She wanted Matthew to take her in his arms to comfort her, but he did no more than rest a heavy warm hand on her shoulder until she had managed to stem the flow a bit.
‘I’ve got news you’re not going to like,’ he said.
‘What?’ She blew her nose, drearily.
‘You ever hear Antony talk about a girl called Jane Snow? Francis knew her, he says. The one before you, he says.’
‘Yes. They were engaged and he … he broke i
t off when he met me.’ It was impossible not to feel something of the glow of triumph she had felt at the time.
‘Yeah. They keep records at the Refuge and I’ve just computerised them. She came in one night about five years ago. Gave his name as the one who’d beaten her. She was advised to go to court but she didn’t. Never came back again.’
He fell silent while she struggled to think. ‘What date was this? Exactly.’
‘December, over five years ago.’
It had been in December five years before, when she was twentyone, that she and Antony had started their affair.
‘I wonder how many more there were,’ she said, in an attempt at detachment.
‘Dunno. I looked up the other two that Francis could remember and they hadn’t been customers.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘You’re hanging about with a violent bloke who has beaten up at least one other woman. And he’s under pressure himself. He may have killed his father, and I think he had a go at his brother by giving him enough cash for an overdose. Someone did, only Francis has lost that bit of memory so I can’t prove it.’
She spread her arms on the desk and put her head on them in utter exhaustion. ‘Go away, Matt. You’ve got Francis to look after. He needs it, I don’t.’
‘If you could see yourself you wouldn’t say that, Annabelle.’ She lifted her head to look at him blearily. ‘Don’t be alone with Antony. Remember what you learned at the Refuge. Can’t you go home to your parents for a bit?’
She thought of her father and brother and the explanations she would have to make. ‘No.’
‘You could come and live with Francis and me. There’s another camp bed – I’d sleep on that and you could have The Bed.’
‘No. Thank you.’ She managed to get her head off the table and dragged herself over to the wash-basin to restore her face to something that would not frighten the rest of her patients. ‘Go and see to Francis, Matt. I will be careful,’ she said, hopelessly, to her reflection in the mirror, and when she turned around he had gone, the door swinging behind him.
