False Money

by Veronica Heley

  She fetched a glass for him from the kitchen while he popped the cork. CJ – as he was commonly known – was about her own age, but looked as if the faintest of breezes might blow him away. He was a grey man; grey hair, grey suit – rather a good suit actually. An unremarkable presence if he wished to blend into the background, but an incisive profile if he wanted to take charge of the conversation.

  ‘I thought you were too busy even to exchange the time of day with your son,’ said Bea, feeling sour.

  He grunted – which might mean anything – and poured champagne.

  She said, ‘I haven’t even had a chance to look at Chris’s DVD yet.’

  He held out his hand for her copy, slotted it in under the television set, and pressed buttons. Picking up his glass, he retired to the settee, still holding on to the remote control.

  Bea rolled her eyes. Men who walked in and commandeered her remote control were, to her mind, overbearing brutes. That included her son Max, who believed that, even today, a woman couldn’t be trusted to change a television channel.

  The credits rolled. A girl in a white sweater and jeans was helping an elderly woman to dress, in what looked like a council flat. Then she was playing a violin, busking in the open air and collecting money in the violin case laid on the ground before her. She wasn’t a beauty, but had an interesting face. Dark-skinned for a European, fair for a Nigerian. Tomi, presumably.

  Each scene was short, lasting only long enough to register what the girl was doing and then passing on. One minute Tomi was teaching a small child to play the violin, then – dressed in a workmanlike overall and cap – she was dishing out school dinners. The clock registered time was passing. The girl, now back in sweater and jeans, was rehearsing in a flat with some other musicians, then playing at a party, wearing a long red dress. Back to the council flat. The violin was in its case in one corner, while Tomi – back in white sweater and jeans – fed a paraplegic woman in a wheelchair. Finally, Tomi was in evening dress with her violin case under arm, returning home after an evening out, fitting her key into the door. Was it all a dream? Which was reality?

  The DVD ended. ‘Interesting,’ said Bea, ‘if confusing.’

  CJ switched off the power. ‘I’ve never met the girl. Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Chris wants her for his next film. Something about people having the wrong shadows. Sounds weird. Might be just unusual enough to work.’

  Bea tried to be tactful. ‘Why are you concerned? If he doesn’t find her, he loses his star performer, abandons film-making and has to go back to uni. That’s what you want him to do, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re magnetic poles apart, him and I.’ He turned the television on, found a football game, muted the sound. ‘I thought you could do a bit of digging. If you could prove the girl’s gone off with a delectable hunk or returned to Nigeria . . . ?’

  ‘You don’t think that’s what’s happened?’

  He sighed, poured himself another glass. ‘No.’

  She blinked. ‘You expect me to prove . . . what?’

  ‘You’re the expert. Take a look at her belongings, see what you can find out about her. You know what to look for: women’s stuff, diaries, calendars; any trace of drug-taking. Letters, her laptop, her mobile.’

  She didn’t tell him she’d been thinking along those lines already. ‘What you’re saying is that if the library books aren’t back at her flat, then she never returned there after she left Chris?’

  ‘That hasn’t occurred to Chris yet. He thinks they’re there somewhere, and that he just didn’t find them. Of course, they may be. He didn’t get on with her flatmate. Would you be willing to have a go?’

  ‘If they’re not there? And if her passport is?’

  Silence. He switched off the television set, drained his glass and got to his feet. ‘Must go. Early start tomorrow.’

  Bea persisted. ‘What if . . . ?’

  ‘I’ll ask around, see if a suitable body has turned up anywhere. Don’t bother to see me out.’ He hardly made a sound as he left. Even the front door closed with a muted click instead of its usual thump.

  Bea looked at the clock, shoved a cork in the neck of the bottle and put it in the fridge for later. She scribbled a note for Maggie, picked up her handbag, collected her big coat from the rack in the hall, set the house alarm, and followed him out.

  A chilly night. Overcast. She switched the heater on in the car. She wondered if she ought to have provided herself with a notebook to record what she learned at Miss Drobny’s. It might have been helpful. Perhaps next time she’d remember.

  Friday evening

  Miss Drobny – Ms Drobny? Mrs? – lived in a basement flat in Holland Park. It wasn’t as fashionable an area as Bea’s part of Kensington, but it was doing nicely, thank you. Number twelve was divided into three flats, and there was a party in progress on the top floor. The ground floor was semi-basement, its windows dark.

  Bea’s house was also three floors, plus an office in her semi-basement, but the scale was different. Bea’s house was late Georgian with tall windows, high ceilings and cream paint; this one was brick built and squat. There was a light over the front door, which was fortunate since the steps down to the basement were steep.

  Bea negotiated the steps, rang the bell and waited.

  A thickset woman opened the door. A grouch with more than a hint of a moustache. ‘You are . . . ?’

  ‘Mrs Abbot. And you are Miss Drobny? Ms? I’m sorry I’m a little late, but I brought your money.’

  The woman ushered Bea inside. ‘Miss. Did you bring cash?’

  ‘Won’t a cheque do? I have cards to prove my identity.’ She handed over one of her business cards.

  Miss Drobny slammed the door shut, casting a darkling eye upwards. ‘They have parties every weekend. No peace.’ She twitched her head, indicating that Bea follow her down a passage encumbered with cardboard boxes, to reach a brightly lit living room at the back of the house.

  The furniture was mismatched, mostly oak, probably from second-hand shops. The room smelt clean; it had been dusted and hoovered recently. A small television set was showing a film with subtitles. A film made in Miss Drobny’s own country?

  Brown curtains, brown and grey carpet, a brass vase containing peacock feathers on the mantelpiece. Weren’t peacock feathers supposed to bring bad luck? The fireplace was not in use, but had been fitted with a reasonably up-to-date gas fire. There was no central heating, but a large overnight storage heater took the chill off the air. In one corner was a somewhat rickety bookcase overflowing with CDs, DVDs and paperbacks. Had the missing library books ended up there?

  A meal for one had been eaten on a table drawn up under a curtained window and a cup of coffee was poured out, ready to drink. Bea was not offered any coffee, which was just as well as she didn’t drink coffee in the evenings.

  Miss Drobny had short, stumpy legs. She was wearing a tight black sweater over a short black skirt. Her tights were also black, no ladders or holes. Her shoes were cheap but well polished, and her black hair had been newly washed. She wore a trace of lipstick, which was the wrong shade for her sallow complexion, but which showed that she cared about her appearance to a certain extent. She probably didn’t earn much. Possibly sent money back home to her family? No boyfriend? No rings on her fingers. No fiancé.

  She pointed to a wooden chair with a removable cushion on it. Bea sat, unbuttoned her overcoat and got out her cheque book. ‘How much . . . ?’

  Miss Drobny had the amount written down on a piece of paper, which she handed over. ‘One month’s rent? For that I keep her room.’

  Bea nodded, wondering if her hostess had exaggerated the rent. Probably not, as it seemed reasonable. She wrote out the cheque and handed it over. ‘This is all most distressing. I do hope Tomi turns up soon, but if she doesn’t . . . I know you’ve had to think ahead and clear her things out of her room. I can see that her disappearance must be putting you in a difficult position. For one
thing, there’s not a lot of storage in these flats, is there?’ She remembered the boxes in the hallway.

  ‘That’s so. It is a big problem.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like me to store Tomi’s things for you, until we know what’s happened to her?’

  ‘You pay her rent, and I keep her boxes for one month. What is your interest in her?’

  ‘My son Oliver is best friends with Chris, the lad who put her in his film. They’re both worried about her.’

  ‘That Chris. Humph. He thinks he’s funny. Too much money, not enough sense.’

  Bea laughed. ‘I agree. He’s an idiot in some ways, but clever in others. Did you see the film he made of Tomi?’

  ‘He puts ideas into her head about being a big film star, earning pots of money. Tomi is stupid. She believes him, and look what happens!’

  Jealousy rears its ugly head, right? Tomi was charismatic, and this woman would be lucky to attract the attention of a failed farmer. How on earth had the two women managed to live together peaceably? Perhaps the arrangement had been recent? Perhaps they’d had a series of rows, and this woman had done away with Tomi? No, kill that thought. Miss Drobny did not know what had happened to Tomi.

  Bea said, ‘I don’t think Chris did away with her, if that’s what you mean. She’s not his type. He only likes blondes . . . that way, I mean. No, he really is worried about her. You are too, aren’t you? You’ve seen enough of the world to realize she could be in danger.’

  Miss Drobny failed to thaw. ‘She is silly girl. I tell her straight. All those men taking her to places she cannot afford, they are up to no good. But she wouldn’t listen to me, oh no!’

  ‘What do you think has happened to her?’

  A frown. A helpless gesture with pudgy hands. ‘This man she is gone away with, she does not give me his name. I know her old boyfriend, Harry. Nice enough in the English way, but with no understanding of what it is to leave your home and make a new life in another country. He says to me, will I clean his flat, and I say he should clean it himself. I am not his slave.’

  ‘No indeed. You already have a job, of course?’

  An emphatic nod. ‘I have a good job with big food preparation company. I have a college degree back in my own country, you understand.’

  Indeed. It was a big step up from cleaning flats. ‘So you don’t think she went off with Harry?’

  Again, the hands twisted and fell apart. ‘She texted me she had a new friend.’

  ‘Anyone can text a message. It need not have been Tomi.’

  ‘It was from her mobile phone. I have no landline here, you understand, so we use mobile phones all the time.’

  ‘Can you give me the number?’

  Miss Drobny recited it by heart, and Bea made a note of it on a page in her diary.

  ‘The day after she texted me, I try her phone, but she does not reply. I try it many, many times. So yes, I am worried about her.’

  ‘It’s hard to know what to do about it, in a foreign country.’

  Miss Drobny nodded. A small grey cat with a thin tail appeared from nowhere and jumped on to her lap. She stroked it, and the cat settled down. ‘The cat from upstairs. She does not like noise. At party time she comes down to me.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Bea, who had been adopted by a stray cat herself. She felt sorry for Miss Drobny. ‘I am going to try to trace Tomi. You will help me, won’t you?’

  Miss Drobny sighed, but nodded. ‘It is best to know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bea. ‘So, let’s start with what we can find out here. Are any of her books still in your bookcase?’

  Miss Drobny heaved herself out of her chair, depositing the cat where she’d been sitting. ‘These are my books, some from home, some for learning English. Tomi buys books from charity shops, and she borrows from library. All trash. She calls them romance.’

  ‘So where are her books?’ Bea scanned the contents of the bookcase quickly. Nothing from the library.

  ‘I put them in this.’ Miss Drobny dragged one of the cardboard boxes in from the hall and opened it up. There were paperback books in plenty, all romances. Bea sifted through them. No library books? No. Yes! Two romances, both overdue.

  ‘No other library books at all?’ said Bea.

  ‘None,’ said Miss Drobny. ‘I thought to take those back to the library for her and then I say to myself, “Better not. Perhaps the police will come one day, and they will want to see everything.”’

  ‘You tried the police?’

  Miss Drobny shook her head. ‘That Chris said he told them and they do nothing. I tell myself, “Wait. Something will happen.” And now you come.’

  Friday evening

  Claire hummed as she gave the baby his last feed for the night. He was a poppet, a sweetie-pie who was so adorable she’d like to eat him up.

  It was going to be a wrench to part with him, but his parents were going abroad and she couldn’t go with them or she’d lose her chance to walk down the aisle to the strains of the Wedding March. Not that she’d got her boyfriend to the point of popping the question yet. What he didn’t know was that she couldn’t have any babies herself. What she could have was untold wealth. Three down, seven to go.

  Baby’s eyes had closed and the bottle had fallen away from his mouth. The little darling. She put him over her shoulder, and he brought up his wind. She was good at that. And at disposing of people who got in her way.

  THREE

  Friday evening

  Bea turned back to her search. Some magazines: fashion and film stars. A calendar with handwritten appointments inked in to the end of the year. Tomi’s handwriting was big and loopy and she used a pen with black ink. There was also a calendar for the following year, peppered with more engagements. Parties, people’s birthdays, a check-up at the dentist’s, a concert here and a play there.

  Her boyfriend Harry’s birthday in February was ringed and underlined. Someone’s wedding was pencilled in for mid-January. There were envelopes addressed to Tomi, which contained cuttings torn out from magazines, free offers for this and that, hair products mostly. She also had a collection of holiday magazines, nearly all for the Mediterranean.

  Ah. A bible, a paperback modern edition. Well used. Tomi hadn’t underlined anything or made notes in the margin, but there were several bookmarks and pieces of paper stuffed into it.

  Miss Drobny said, ‘She is a Christian, as I am. Tomi’s parents are – how you say? – lukewarm Christians, but Tomi is red hot. You are a Christian, too?’

  ‘I try to be one, yes. Would you mind if I borrowed her bible? There are notes in here which might help me.’

  Miss Drobny shrugged. ‘If she doesn’t turn up, the police will want it.’

  ‘Understood.’ Bea put the bible aside and dived back into the box to retrieve one last item, which was an address book: large, solid and too big to carry around in a handbag. ‘She was last seen carrying some library books. They’re not here. Let’s see what else we can find, shall we?’

  ‘Cosmetics.’ Miss Drobny carried in a hefty make-up box and dumped it on top of the first one.

  Much what you’d expect. Mid range, not expensive. Hair care. Did Tomi braid? She’d had braided hair in the video. There was a switch of false black hair in a separate bag, presumably for evening events.

  ‘Clothes.’ Miss Drobny dragged the first two boxes back into the hallway, substituting first one and then a second suitcase. Bea went through both meticulously. Most of the clothes had been dry-cleaned and were pristine. Tomi was not the sort of girl whose clothes lived in a stir-fry on the carpet. Most had labels from supermarkets; trendy, but not expensive. Bea recognized the jeans and top the girl had worn in the video, also the long evening dress in dull red jersey.

  A separate bag contained dirty clothing, which was presumably intended for the washing-machine, plus some used towels. There was a stack of underclothes; some warm jumpers; three jackets, all clean, nothing in the pockets. A long black coat, warm. A bag full of pull-on hats;
some gloves.

  No violin. Had that been a prop supplied by Chris? ‘Did she own any musical instruments?’

  Miss Drobny shook her head. ‘She was not musical. In the film she mimed playing a violin.’

  Underclothes and tights had been rolled up and kept separately. The girl had worn long woollen nighties, but also possessed some lighter silky pyjamas, perhaps for sleepovers? Tomi had felt the cold. The flat did feel slightly damp. Shoes and boots were in a sports bag. Nothing expensive, nothing down-at-heel.

  Bea sat back on her heels. ‘Any more?’

  One last box produced toiletries. There was a manicure set, bubble bath, some tiny bottles of good perfume. Tampons, aspirins, paper hankies, throat lozenges, digestive remedies, something for a sore throat. Oh, and a small radio. Also three huge handbags, all empty except for the odd receipt and some used paper tissues.

  While Bea investigated the handbags, Miss Drobny dragged the boxes back into the hallway and brought back a large, old-fashioned laptop. ‘Her boyfriend gave her this. He couldn’t find the connecting leads and the batteries have run down. Typical of him to give her something that needs attention. He said she could easily buy some new batteries, but they’re expensive and she isn’t technical. She used it for a while, but when the batteries finally gave up, so did she. She told me her parents were going to the USA for a holiday. I am thinking every day that they will phone her, but if her phone is not working, what will they do next?’

  ‘They’ll get someone – perhaps a friend of theirs or a business acquaintance – to come round here to see what’s wrong. No one has come yet?’

  Miss Drobny shook her head. ‘I think their email address is on her laptop, but I don’t want to buy new batteries for it. I have a good job, but not enough money for extras.’

  ‘I know someone who might be able to make it work,’ said Bea, thinking of CJ, and of Oliver. Oliver loved a challenge when it came to computers. Bea sank back on her heels. ‘What was she wearing when she left, do you know? What handbag was she carrying?’