Johnson nodded, his face relaxing. ‘She was. I wish I’d been able to push more stuff her way, but we don’t often get to cover hard news. Our core business usually circulates around general commercial stuff: corporate developments, mergers and acquisitions, that sort of thing. It’s all pretty low on excitement, really, in comparison. But Helen, she was like a terrier, in spite of her looks.’ He looked mildly abashed. ‘Sorry — don’t mean to be sexist or anything, but you know what she looked like. She was successful because the people she went after never saw her coming.’
Riley nodded. She knew what he meant: Helen Bellamy, a wolf in elegant sheep’s clothing. ‘So she did all right, then?’
‘I suppose. She certainly seemed to be in regular work. She probably had the same problems everyone else does — taking on stories that never paid in proportion to the time and effort put in. But she seemed to manage.’
‘And no problems related to any of her past assignments, as far as you know?’
‘Spit-backs from previous jobs?’ Johnson shook his head. ‘None that she mentioned. As for what we gave her, like I said, it wasn’t exactly hard-core embezzlement or multinational fraud, where people disappear under a motorway piling.’ He paused and looked warily at Riley.
‘What?’
‘Well, to be honest, I got the impression the last time we spoke that she was waiting to land something a bit more heavyweight. She was a bit distracted, which wasn’t like her. I thought she was a bit frustrated with the run-of-the-mill and wanted something more. It was odd, really, because her work was absolutely thorough and on the nail. Totally professional. In fact, she got a lot of praise for it. I reckon she was in line for some major assignments eventually, if only… ’ He shrugged and looked saddened. ‘Sorry.’
‘When did you last speak to her?’
‘A couple of weeks ago. I needed to check some detail about a story she’d done.’
‘You don’t know what this potential job was, though?’
‘No. She never said. I think it was still hanging at the time. It was more a feeling I had, that’s all.’
There was something in Johnson’s face; something he wasn’t saying.
‘What was your impression?’
Eventually, he sighed. ‘She once said she wanted to do the kind of work that you do.’
Riley felt a stab of surprise. ‘Me? She said that?’
Johnson nodded with a weak smile, as if he’d betrayed a confidence. ‘She said she’d met you and admired your work. I think she felt she could have been doing better for herself.’
‘She once asked me if I knew anything about oligarchs.’ The voice floated through from the outer office, inserting itself between them. Riley and Johnson turned to stare at Emerald, who was busy filing a nail, her head bent in concentration.
‘Oligarchs?’ Riley glanced at Johnson, wondering if the girl was in the habit of joining in on conversations with visitors. He shrugged, evidently used to it.
‘Yeah. Rich Russians. Billionares, trillionaires, whatever they are. Like the bloke who bought Chelsea. She asked if we’d ever covered any of them in the mags. I said no.’
‘Are you sure?’ Riley couldn’t think why, but she felt it might be important. It was quite a shift, from mundane business matters to Russians with bottomless bank accounts.
Johnson shifted in his chair. ‘Em’s right. It’s not something we’ve ever done.’ He frowned, focussing on the possibilities. ‘I’m not sure why, exactly — they certainly have their fingers in enough pies. And with what’s brewing up under Putin at the moment, and his growing antagonism towards the west, maybe a short series would have been good.’ He realised what he was saying and looked guilty.’ Sorry. Bad timing.’
Riley let the thought go. She didn’t need the conversation to drift off into the realms of publishing fantasy. ‘Do you know if Helen had any family?’
Johnson shook his head. ‘No. Well, I don’t know — if she did, she didn’t talk about them. She came in when she had to, did what was needed and that was it. Like I said, professional.’
‘What about that last cheque?’ It was Emerald again.
‘What about it?’ Johnson asked.
‘She rang and asked for it to go to a different address. Somewhere down in Hampshire. I’ve got a note here somewhere.’ She dropped the emery board and attacked her keyboard with a blur of fingers.
Johnson looked at Riley and flushed. ‘Sorry… I didn’t know anything about this.’
‘Here it is.’ There was a buzz of a printer and the girl came through with a sheet of paper. It was a simple payment slip for syndication fees, payable to Helen Bellamy. The address was: Mrs C. Demelzer, Long Cottage, Cotton Hill, Nr Basingstoke, Hants.
‘She rang last week,’ Emerald continued, ‘and asked me to hold any outstanding payments. She said if she didn’t come in to collect them by Friday, to make a cheque out to the woman at this address. I sent it off yesterday. You approved it.’ She stared at Johnson as if daring him to argue.
He blinked back. ‘Really?’
Emerald smiled conspiratorially at Riley, eyes twinkling behind her green specs. ‘Well, not really, but you would have in the end. I mean, why should we worry where the money goes — it’s her tax bill, isn’t it? And she was always really sweet to me. She said I had style.’ She gave David Johnson an arch look and turned away.
Riley bit her lip to stop herself smiling. She wanted to jump up and hug the girl. She held up the piece of paper. ‘Was this normal? To have payments made out to someone else?’
‘Not really.’ Johnson seemed mildly perturbed by the news, and that someone outside the company was now privy to it. ‘But we have a whole list of freelance contributors, so one-off payments are fairly common. If she’d asked it as a favour, I suppose Em’s right — I’d have approved it.’ He nodded at the piece of paper. ‘Maybe she owed this person money.’
‘Maybe. Can I take this? It might be important.’
‘Help yourself.’ Johnson prodded at his glasses and stood up, his eyes straying towards his monitor. ‘Anything to help. I mean, Em’s right… Helen was a really sweet woman. Such a waste.’
Back out on the street, Riley took a deep breath of air. Somewhere along the line, a young woman with a background in business reporting and a growing reputation had expressed a desire to do something else: the kind of work on which Riley herself had built a career. But was that all she had done — simply longed for a change? A shift away from what might have become mundane and ‘safe’? Or had she gone further than that, stepping out of her comfort zone into the world Riley knew, and in doing so, looked at something — or someone — just a little too closely for comfort?
8
Palmer parked his car a short walk away from Riley’s flat off Holland Park Avenue, and climbed out, glad of the opportunity to stretch his legs. He liked this part of west London; it was just on the edge of busy, without being too frantic to enjoy the ever-changing atmosphere and buzz of an inner-city suburb.
He dialled Riley’s number as he walked. She picked up on the second ring and told him to come on up, the kettle was on.
He slid the phone back in his pocket and yawned. Everything was catching up on him; too many late nights and greasy pit stops, too little sleep, too long spent peering through a hazy windscreen. And now this.
He hadn’t accomplished a lot since hearing the news about Helen. Sitting in his office, remote from the specifics of how she had died, had merely brought on a rising sense of frustration. Worst of all was the increasing realisation that, in spite of their closeness for a while, he hadn’t really known Helen very well. The idea filled him with sadness and regret.
He wasn’t looking forward to the next few minutes. Given a choice, he’d have preferred to shut himself off from everyone else and deal with the news of Helen’s death in his own way. It was unreasonable and even disloyal, he knew that, because Riley was probably his closest friend and the one person he could turn to at a time of crisi
s. But years of operating in solitude had made him accustomed to not relying much on anyone else.
Riley was waiting for him on the first floor landing. She looked worried and drawn, and he guessed she hadn’t slept well, either. He nodded matter-of-factly and followed her inside. When she hesitated before going into the kitchen, and appeared as if she was about to throw her arms around him, he held up a hand.
‘I’m fine. Really,’ he said brusquely, and instantly regretted it. He knew she must be feeling like hell, for him if not for herself. He reached out for her. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean it. This is good. But don’t tell anyone.’
They hugged each other tight for a few seconds, before Riley patted him on the back and slipped into the kitchen, where she clattered around making coffee. He couldn’t see her face but he could read the body language. He left her to it, relieved he hadn’t stuck to the stiff upper lip. She might not have known Helen very well, but she clearly wasn’t unaffected by what had happened.
A large bruiser of a tabby cat entered from the bedroom and walked across to greet him. It rubbed against his legs just long enough to make contact, then turned away and sat down to clean itself. Palmer smiled. The cat was a feline self-set, having adopted Riley on a whim, but alternating between her and a granite-featured old Pole named Grobowski, downstairs. While Riley made do with calling the animal Cat and stocking standard feline food, Mr Grobowski shouted a lot in heavily-accented English and called it Lipinski, feeding it heavy portions of Polish cooking which he put together in his kitchen for compatriots at the local community centre.
When Riley brought the mugs into the living room, Palmer sat and eyed her steadily, waiting. He knew she’d have questions. Some of them would be disguised as throwaway comments, but she’d still be angling for answers. In his experience, women invariably had the edge when it came to interrogation techniques. It was something passed across at birth along with the DNA.
He didn’t have long to wait for the first one.
‘You never said why you and Helen broke up.’
Palmer sighed. This wasn’t something he felt good talking about. Not that he had any reason to feel guilty, but saying nothing wasn’t an option. ‘Actually, we didn’t so much break up as move on. When it was over, it was over.’ He took his mug and stared into it. ‘Ships that pass, I suppose.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Riley sat facing him.
He smiled gently. If there was anyone who understood the transient nature of relationships in their respective trades, it was her. He didn’t know every aspect of her private life, and didn’t pry, but he knew she was still coming to grips with a lengthy split from former army officer, John Mitcheson, who was somewhere in America. Palmer knew Mitcheson as a likeable, cool, yet detached individual who seemed hell-bent on ploughing his own furrow, even if that took him away from Riley. But he also knew it wasn’t as simple as the divergence of paths: there were questions in Riley’s mind over Mitcheson which even Palmer wasn’t sure about. Some of those questions concerned just what his moral limits were when it came to doing his job, which was partly centred on private security work. It was the ‘partly’ which raised some of the most searching questions.
As if reading his mind, she said simply, ‘Life’s a bitch, isn’t it?’
He nodded and looked at his coffee. ‘Do you have anything stronger than this crap?’
‘You ingrate. That’s best Colombian — a grade five. I’ve got some Kenyan, but it’s only a three. I keep it for any girlies who come round.’ She stood up and went into the kitchen, returning immediately with a bottle of whisky and two glasses, already poured. ‘You had me worried, there. I thought you’d gone teetotal on me.’ She put down the bottle and handed him a glass, and took a deep pull of her own to lead the way, wincing as the liquor burned its way down her throat. ‘You’ll have to talk to the police, Frank. A DI named Pell seems to be the lead man.’
Palmer nodded and took a sip of his drink. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Reasonable. Professional… but I got the impression he’s a bit of a rebel on the quiet.’ She explained about being allowed at the crime scene, a favour for a favour between Pell and his colleague in forensics. ‘He wants to get results, but he’s thorough.’
‘I’ll call him.’ Palmer twisted his glass, then said, ‘Tell me about it.’
He listened as she went through it, leaving nothing out. She began with the receipt of the phone call from Pell, dragging her out of bed and into the night, with terse instructions to tell nobody. She described the scene with the SOCO team and the rain-soaked glare of lights, the position of the body, and the way Helen Bellamy’s wrists had been tied, the bruising around her face. There was a dull flatness to her voice, the telling as unemotional as possible, and he knew she was finding this the most difficult of all.
He waited until she finished, making no comment. He had switched on that part of his brain that was analytical and calm; the part which his RMP training had instilled in him — the ability to remain detached and objective — seeing the subject of the investigation as no more than a set of facts, events and figures.
‘What do they reckon?’ he said finally. He meant how did the police think Helen had died.
‘Pell didn’t say. Or wouldn’t. They only wanted me there to see if I could identify her.’ Riley flicked a hand, indicating her face. ‘At a guess, I’d say she was hit. Hard. There were marks, but it wasn’t easy to tell what they were under the lights. They didn’t allow me get close enough to judge.’
Palmer’s expression was grim. ‘If she was tied up, it was to keep her subdued. She must have got involved in something. You said there was a car?’
She described how the vehicle was buried deep in the undergrowth, adding to the images in his mind. ‘It looked like a Golf. Was that what she drove?’
‘Yes. An old one.’ Palmer was puzzled. If the car was found by the first walker who came along, it wasn’t exactly well hidden. Why flag up the location in that way? He sat back, unravelling the facts in his mind, slicing and dicing until he had some sense of order. Riley had her way; this was his. He didn’t have all the information right now — not even a fraction of it — but it was his way of teasing out all the possible answers until he had something to work with.
The other question was why she’d had Riley’s name and phone number in her car. Plans for a girlie exchange of information, perhaps? Or a work thing?
‘There’s nothing significant about her last assignments,’ Riley told him, ‘at least, as far as I could tell.’
‘You checked already?’ Palmer lifted an eyebrow. ‘That was quick work.’
‘I mentioned it to Donald and he gave me a lead.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought it best to check it out.’ She explained briefly what she had learned at Copnor Business Publications. ‘It was standard work. They don’t cover commercial frauds or anything like that, unless it has a wider market impact, so they’re not exactly into anything murky or overtly criminal. But Helen did let drop that she was hoping to get into something more interesting.’
‘Like what?’ Palmer was surprised. From what he remembered of Helen, she had enjoyed her work.
‘The editor thought she was bored with the same old same old. I can relate to that. His assistant said she’d asked recently if they’d ever covered the Russian oligarchs as a topic.’
‘Rich Russians?’ He chewed it over. They were as much in the news for buying football clubs and large chunks of the London property market as they were for their on-off relationships with Moscow. Maybe Helen had stumbled on a juicy story and was testing the water.
‘She also rang last week and asked for any outstanding fees to go to a woman at an address in Hampshire.’
Another surprise. Helen had centred her life on London, apparently eager to be where the action was. She’d never mentioned anyone outside the capital. ‘A family member?’
‘I was hoping you’d know the answer to that.’
‘We didn’t get to that level.’
He was aware that his voice was probably tinged with regret. ‘She didn’t talk about herself much,’ he explained. ‘But then, neither did I.’ He held her gaze. If Riley had any thoughts about men’s lack of curiosity about the women in their lives, she wasn’t saying anything. ‘It seemed to suit us both. You’ve done good work. Thanks.’
Riley stood up and dug out the sheet of paper Emerald had given her. ‘Here’s the address. We could take a look tomorrow, if you like.’
He scanned the details. Helen had definitely never mentioned a connection with Hampshire — certainly nobody close enough to have sent money to. ‘Why wait?’ He glanced at his watch, suddenly taken by the idea of doing something positive. ‘Like now.’
‘I can’t.’ Riley waved an apologetic hand. ‘I’ve got a meeting this afternoon to pitch for a job. I have to get my glad rags on and act civilised. You know how it is.’
Palmer knew. Like Riley’s assignments, most of his jobs came along by word of mouth or through Donald Brask. But every now and then, he had to do his own legwork to help things along. The brutal reality was, if freelances didn’t pitch, they didn’t eat.
‘Do you mind if I do it?’
‘Of course not. Just don’t frighten her, that’s all. She could be a frail old biddy with a weak ticker.’
He nodded. It was also highly likely that the woman in Hampshire might not know about Helen’s death. Springing the news on her could be disastrous. It was a lesson he’d learned first-hand in the RMP, when delivering bad news to someone in married quarters, after an accident in training or at a local pub.
He tucked the paper in his breast pocket. He had a sudden thought. ‘Back at the site, did you notice signs of another car?’
‘No. It was too dark. And Pell didn’t say anything. Why?’
‘Because it would have taken two people to get Helen there: one to drive her car, the other to help dump the body, then drive them away. A single man dumping the car and moving away on foot would have been noticed.’ He was trying to picture the scene as Riley had described it. The car had been dumped at a remote spot, but less than two hundred yards from the road. Other than forcing it into the undergrowth, there had been no elaborate attempt to hide anything. Why?
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