by Rose Edmunds
Anyway, at least my client was satisfied, even if I wasn’t.
27
To begin with, Mel couldn’t take it in. In fact, I formed the distinct impression she’d vastly prefer something awful to have happened to “Mo” than admit she’d been played by a trickster. But once she’d grasped the essential bleakness of her situation, she howled like child.
I must confess my inner bitch felt just a little pleased about how events had panned out. Mel had been so smug, so sure she was in control of the situation, while banging on incessantly about my poor judgement. She’d been blinded by a combination of greed and lust, and I’d been clear-sighted as ever. But my inner bitch wasn’t mean enough to rub her nose in any of this while her emotions were so raw. Mel needed tea and sympathy, preferably washed down with a few Mojitos.
Even with my emotional detachment, it seemed absurd that we’d invested so much time worrying about an unknown enemy, only to be betrayed by one of our own team. It was even more ridiculous that I’d wasted so much emotional energy hating someone who didn’t exist. Now I doubted every aspect of events so far, even wondering whether “Beresford” had arranged for Živsa’s murder and my “accident”. Since we’d been helping him, this didn’t stack up logically, but nothing seemed impossible now. Other questions sprang to mind, like why the con man had latched on to George and me rather than making his own enquiries? And, more fundamentally, assuming he hadn’t taken the self-portrait for his personal gratification, who was he working for? I doubted whether I would ever uncover the truth.
Meanwhile, as the sobbing abated momentarily, Mel began to process her pain.
‘For the first time in my life, I’d really fallen for someone. All my childhood, growing up in care homes, I longed for someone to love me, and treat me with respect. And finally, I thought I’d found him. I felt so sure Mo adored me—I’m still sure, because he couldn’t have faked it.’
I remained silent. He’d faked everything else with such consummate skill I didn’t see why his affection for Mel should be any exception. But denial is a natural survival mechanism, and it seemed cruel to deprive her of what little solace she had.
‘Do you think he might come back for me?’
On the other hand, pandering to her delusions would be dishonest. After a moment’s indecision, I opted for candour over kindness.
‘I doubt it. Better to accept it wasn’t meant to be and try to deal with it…’
‘But why propose if he planned to do a runner?’
Admittedly, this puzzled me too. I guessed the purpose of this apparently sadistic act had been to lull her into a false sense of security, so she wouldn’t anticipate the coming betrayal.
‘He must be coming back, he must,’ she concluded.
For goodness sake, how long would it take for reality to sink in? This was so unlike Mel, who’d defrauded her employer, plundered my bank account, and done God knows what to earn the money to repay me. I was supposed to be the Crazy Amy, out of touch with reality, not the coldly calculating Mel. In this state, whatever advice I gave her would have limited impact, yet failing to advise her would be irresponsible.
‘How about a drink?’ I suggested, for even if she didn’t need one, I most certainly did.
***
I led her to a modest restaurant round the corner. We made a funny pair with Mel wiping away her tears on the napkin, plus me with my sling and a fading black eye. Mel toyed with her salad even more than usual, although she put away a prodigious amount of the Gewürztraminer wine I’d selected. When she noticed my difficulty eating, she did eventually ask about the arm, but seemed indifferent to my answer. Only the loss of the Armani jacket cheered her somewhat, otherwise she focused on nothing beyond her own abject misery.
Towards the end of the second bottle of wine her phone pinged, and she scanned it desperately, hoping against hope it might be him.
‘Vodafone—welcome to bloody Switzerland again.’ Overcome by a fresh paroxysm of sobbing, she rushed to the ladies’ room to compose herself.
She was gone for ages—so long I almost went after her. But when she finally returned, she seemed noticeably calmer, as though she had turned a corner. And she now began to analyse her situation, which I interpreted as a positive sign.
‘I should have smelt a rat from the beginning. I mean, why should an eminent professor be interested in me? He made me feel so special, never tried to belittle me or put me down. Even the way he annoyed you built up my self-esteem.’
Yes—without a doubt, the charlatan had picked up on her envy of me and played it relentlessly.
‘He was extremely convincing, though. I grew up around these liberal academics and he had the personality type down to a tee. I never doubted him for a nanosecond. He irritated me as much as if not more than any of my mother’s friends. And weirdly, if you put him head to head with the genuine Beresford and asked people to say which was the real deal, I bet they’d all plump for our guy.’
‘Exactly, he was a class act—everything to everybody, like a chameleon. To me, he provided the love and social status I craved. To you, he was everything you detested, and he pushed your buttons non-stop. And his polite respect for an old man played to George’s ego.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘I guess what upsets me most is I thought I had the upper hand in the relationship.’
I drained the dregs of the wine into our glasses while silently congratulating her on a remarkable degree of insight into herself as well as others.
‘Yeah—irony or what? You were trying to con him and all the while he was conning you.’
‘True,’ she agreed. ‘I honestly thought I could have the luxury of falling for someone I was conning. Big mistake—lesson for next time.’
I laughed, though I didn’t doubt the seriousness of her comment. There would be another mark, another con, as night follows day. Mel’s heart had probably been broken beyond repair many years ago in some foster home or other. And I now recognised that her primary emotion was not grief, but anger at being thwarted.
‘And that’s where he played a real blinder,’ she continued, with more than a tinge of admiration in her voice. ‘It takes true class for a con man to pretend he’s the mark. He dangled it all in front of me—the inheritance from his father, the weak heart, and the hints at marriage. And then, just before he brings down the axe, he lulls me into total security by the proposal. I bloody well thought I’d won, Amy, but instead I’d lost big time.’
‘Anyway, like you say, you’ll be on your guard next time,’ I said, unsure how to react to this cold dissection of the con.
‘It was a superb performance,’ she declared finally. ‘And I’ll raise my glass to him, whoever and wherever he is!’
Amazingly, even as his victim, she still admired his techniques in the abstract—shockingly callous even by my standards.
‘Anyway, I was right about him, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes, you were right, for what it’s worth.’
‘In fact,’ I said, emboldened, ‘I’ve been reflecting on this, and I would go as far as to say that I’m better than you at identifying who to trust.’
Buoyed up by the wine, this seemed true—I’d always picked up the vibes, but my emotions had been so invalidated by my mother I’d come to distrust my intuition. Hey—a profound thought—which hadn’t surfaced at all in the Priory.
‘Hm,’ she said. ‘I severely doubt that, after your poor showing in the past. Still, let’s not argue about it. In the future, if either of us has suspicions about someone, the other should listen, because between us, we are infallible.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘And by the way,’ she added. ‘My glass is empty, and so is the bottle.’
Unlike the Czechs, the Swiss are not serious drinkers and already we’d attracted unfavourable attention, so we headed off to a bar.
When I stood up, I realised I was already drunk, no doubt aided by the pills I’d been popping. And the day
was still young…
28
As I’d predicted, lunch morphed into an epic night on the town. Mel drank considerably more than me but seemed eerily unaffected, except for a tendency to repeat the same delusional rubbish over and over. It had been a shrewd move to book a separate hotel room, I decided.
At around three in the morning, my phone rang.
‘Mel—what’s happened?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘You remember me telling you Mo had real feelings for me…’
‘Yes.’ My voice had an acid tone, as she’d been saying so ad nauseam all through the evening, while roundly and volubly rejecting any rebuttals.
‘Look—I know you don’t agree, but I’m right. He fell for me, which was his Achilles heel—don’t you see?’
I didn’t see at all, and we’d rehashed all this endlessly in the bar. I told Mel repeatedly that falling for her was just another con trick, but she wouldn’t listen. I’d put it down to all the cocktails, but depressingly here she was, more sober now, trotting out the same arrant nonsense.
‘No Mel—to be brutally honest, you’ve played your part and he has no use for you now.’
‘But he could have accomplished everything without making a move on me. He didn’t need to.’
‘Oh come on, Mel. He saw his chance and he grabbed it. He figured I’d be more willing to cooperate if you fell for him, and as an added bonus he’s enjoyed unlimited free no-strings sex. What man would refuse? Look—there’s no easy way to say this, but he isn’t coming back.’
‘OK—I agree. He isn’t coming back.’
Hallelujah, I thought—at last, I’d got through her thick skull. But my joy was short-lived.
‘No—he’s intending me to find him.’
My sigh must have been audible to her.
‘Which will be impossible, but anyway, carry on.’
‘Well, I went through his luggage with a fine-toothed comb and found no clues, although he had a passport in Beresford’s name, whatever that means.’
‘It means he has another passport in his real name.’
‘But then I remembered—he told me something which may be a clue. OK, maybe not a deliberate clue. I guess being realistic, there are three alternatives.’
‘Ha—you’d never cut the mustard as a professor’s wife. An alternative is one of two choices, so you can never have three.’
It was the kind of smug pronouncement typical of my mother’s friends along with making the distinction between “Can I?” and “May I” and other such pretentious twaddle.
‘Oh, piss off—three scenarios then. First, he’s an amazing con artist, but he loves me and he’s left me a clue so I can find him. Second, he has feelings for me and he slipped up because deep down he wanted me to go after him. And third, looking on the dark side, he doesn’t give a shit about me and he simply made a mistake.’
‘I vote for scenario three,’ said my inner bitch.
‘I haven’t even told you what he said yet.’
‘Unlikely to change my mind, but go on.’
‘So, he talked a lot, when we were in bed, and I guess most of it was lies. But there was one thing I believe was one hundred per cent honest.’
‘Go on.’
I doubted whether the man had ever uttered an honest word in his life, but I decided to let her get it off her chest.
‘We were talking about you and Rudi, and whether you might get together and live in that castle.’
‘Yes…’
They had a bloody cheek, speculating about my non-existent romantic entanglement, but I said nothing.
‘And he said he’d always fancied living in a castle, and I said what a shame he couldn’t afford to. Then he said, that’s just where you’re wrong, Mel.’
‘So I said I suppose you mean in a remote corner of Scotland, but the upkeep of an old pile wouldn’t be at all practical and besides you have your job to consider.’
Except of course he didn’t.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘he said not so. He’d just viewed a castle that was affordable and convenient, although tiny. And it was named after his mother, Polly, which he considered to be a good omen. So I asked him where it was, and he clammed up, as though he’d let too much slip…’
‘Sounds like bollocks to me.’
‘We can check though,’ she said. ‘I’m coming over to your room now. We can work on this together, using your excellent sleuthing skills.’
‘Can’t it wait till the morning?’ Never in my life had I been less enthusiastic about sleuthing.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It can’t.’
So less than five minutes later, she had me googling Polly Castle.
‘Hey yes, it exists,’ I said. ‘And it certainly would be small.’
‘Let me see.’ She grabbed the phone off me and her face immediately fell.
‘Polly Pocket doll’s Cinderella Castle. I suppose that’s your idea of a joke.’
‘Not mine, but his. And if he’s familiar with Polly Pocket he must have kids. It’s a vintage toy from about twenty years ago. The little girl I used to babysit had one.’
‘Oh no.’ Mel couldn’t hide her disappointment. ‘Is there nothing else? I felt so sure he was being honest…’
I tried again, but without success.
‘Shame, because even if it was scenario three, I’d like to track him down and kill him.’
‘Well, don’t give up yet.’
My mind was whirring away. I’d told George I would find the imposter and the painting and although it had been pure rhetoric on my part, I now had the bit between my teeth to solve the mystery. And I was warming to the concept of “Mo” inadvertently giving away information. He probably wasn’t that smart underneath the professorial veneer.
‘OK—let’s suppose he told the truth up to a point, but didn’t intend you to find him.’
‘So you mean he viewed a castle but didn’t want me to discover where?’
‘Yes—what part would he lie about?’
‘It being called after his mother?’
‘No, I have a hunch that bit’s true.’
‘OK—so he lied about the name?’
‘Spot on. Now, he told you the castle was tiny, so let’s take this to the extreme. Apart from Polly Pocket, where is the smallest castle in Britain?’
I googled again, and was staggered by what came up. The smallest castle in England was Molly’s Lodge, not Polly’s, situated in Warwickshire and currently on the market for half a million quid.
‘I’ll bet you a pound to a penny on Molly being his mother’s name,’ I said.
‘But even if you’re right that doesn’t get us anywhere. There must be thousands of women called Molly.’
‘’Yes,’ I said. ‘But there’s only one castle.’
29
The strategy was simple—pose as a potential buyer and use our cunning to extract the names of other viewers from the current owner. Armed with a surname, with luck I’d trace either the mother or the son, as he’d hardly have viewed it using his Beresford alias.
‘Wow—you’re so clever, Amy,’ said Mel, when I outlined the plan. ‘I’d never have thought of that.’
‘I expect you would, eventually,’ I said, in a slightly patronising tone.
As a former estate agent, George was also enthusiastic when I called him later that morning.
‘What a tremendous idea. The agent will check whether you’re a bona fide purchaser, but that’s no problem because your property is on the market and you have a firm offer.’
He also reminded me how these days money-laundering regulations apply to estate agents, so it would have been difficult for “Beresford” to view the castle under his alias.
‘Incidentally,’ he said, as I was about to hang up. ‘I’m not sure how you’ll react to this, but Stan just told me he knew all along our Beresford was phony.’
‘What? How?’
‘Because he’d already met the real professor.’
Incredibly, Stan had referred to Beresford as a faker when we’d all been together, but it hadn’t occurred to either of us to take the comment literally.
‘Why the heck didn’t he say something earlier?’
‘I don’t know,’ George admitted. ‘There are various facets to Stan’s character I find unfathomable.’
Which was an understatement if ever I heard one.
30
As our flight descended into Heathrow, I relished the prospect of being back in a familiar environment, no longer surrounded by people and places whose names resembled a bad hand in Scrabble.
I invited Mel to stay at my house in Chiswick while we planned our campaign. She’d never mentioned where, if anywhere, she lived now, but instinct told me she might be glad of free accommodation. Her eager acceptance of my offer supported my theory.
‘This place is different,’ she observed, straight away. In fact, she’d only been inside twice before, and neither visit had been authorised by me, but it seemed impolite to remind her of this in the circumstances.
‘How?’
‘Obviously, it’s designed to make visitors go “wow”, but wasn’t a happy home. Now—how can I describe it? The bad atmosphere has gone.’
It was a bizarrely perceptive comment, but I decided against telling her I’d hired a “spiritual cleaner” to rid the house of negative energy—it seemed so silly. And I hadn’t disclosed this to George either, as he considered his expertise in the market had clinched the sale.
‘Hey—that must be why I finally had an offer on the place,’ I quipped back.
I telephoned the agents handling Molly’s Lodge and made an appointment to view it the next day. Mel and I would drive over together, posing as a divorced woman and friend.
‘Can I take a proper look round this place?’ Mel asked.
‘Sure, I’ll take you on a tour.’
When we reached the nursery, she stopped.
‘Wow. You’ve put on a few pounds, but is there something you haven’t told me?’
