by C J Carver
‘Could you tell me who the caretakers were then?’
More tapping while I gazed outside at the park, the dull green grass crossed by paths, the avenues and scattered leafless trees. The sky was leaden and aside from the odd flash of a red scarf or blue gloves, no colour. I felt a longing for spring. Or the Caribbean. I’d had enough of winter.
A soft whirring sound indicated a printer was at work. Helen passed me a sheet of paper.
She said, ‘None of them work here anymore.’
I ran my eyes down the list of three people and their dates of employment. Two men, one woman. One man’s address was in Wandsworth, the other in Ealing. The woman’s address showed Peckham. Each had a phone number attached. I had to hope none of them had moved.
‘Anything else?’ Helen asked, bright-eyed and keen.
‘I’d like the same printout for everyone on the payroll at that time.’
She blinked. ‘Everyone?’
‘Everyone.’
‘It might take a while.’
‘I’m happy to wait.’
I spent the time half on my laptop, half looking out of the window, thinking. What had Rob been doing in these offices? Who had he been seeing? I’d have done anything to see the relevant page of the reception folder when Rob had signed in.
Finally, Helen reached across to me and I had another list. A swift count showed it had twenty-three names on it.
‘Thanks.’
She arched her eyebrows prettily, waiting for another request.
I tapped the list she’d given me. ‘Who on here is still around?’
She looked at her screen. ‘Roger Marshall.’
‘The co-founder.’
‘Yes. Along with Eryn Deroukakis and Tim Kelly.’ Helen looked further. ‘And Steve Smith and…’ She glanced at me. ‘I know what. I’ll print off who’s employed here today and you can compare the lists.’
‘I’m very grateful,’ I told her sincerely, which won me another pretty smile.
The next list contained forty-one employees from the directors to general counsellors and administrative assistants. The company had almost doubled in twelve years, and out of the twenty-three people in Mayfair’s employ twelve years earlier, six were still here.
‘Who’s available for me to speak to this afternoon?’
‘I’ll see.’
I let her ring two people, who had no interest in wasting time with a stranger who wasn’t interested in buying a multimillion-pound property in the Turks and Caicos, and then I leaned forward. ‘Tell them I’m a friend of Mr Abbott’s, and it’s at his behest I’m here.’
Chapter 24
Five minutes later I was with the main man himself, Roger Marshall, fifties, dark spiky hair, open shirt beneath a casual jacket.
‘George sent you?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ I was getting good at this lying lark. Everyone seemed to believe me even though to my ears my tone sounded slightly off.
He steepled his hands in front of his face. ‘Helen intimated it was about Tony’s death. I’m surprised. Usually George won’t have it mentioned.’
‘He wants to find the person who did it.’
Both eyebrows lifted. ‘It’s not before time. Are you a private detective?’
I couldn’t help it. It was so far from how I imagined myself, I blinked.
‘Cold case,’ I said wildly. ‘We both want to know definitively who was in the building that evening.’
‘I told the police at the time.’ Roger frowned.
‘I know it’s old ground, but in my experience things that people thought irrelevant at the time, become relevant later.’ I waited for him to smell the bullshit, but he gave a nod.
‘It was just the two of us,’ he said. ‘It was Friday. Everyone else had gone.’
‘Two?’ I prompted.
‘Myself and Tony.’
Not Rob, nor the pretty young woman in the white blouse, or the middle-aged businesswoman. Odd.
‘Could you tell me what happened that evening?’
Roger leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head briefly before dropping them to rest on his desk. ‘Not much really. The first I knew anything was wrong was when a police officer stuck his head around my door. He was checking on a report that a man with a gun had run through reception.’
‘What time was this?’
A guarded look came over Roger’s face. ‘After nine or so. I think I told the police nine fifteen.’
I frowned. ‘Are you sure about that?’
His expression remained guarded. ‘Absolutely.’
‘It’s late to be working. On a Friday.’
‘I take it you haven’t set up your own business.’ His tone turned contemptuous. ‘Turned it into a multi-billion company with seven offices in London, fifteen provincials in the UK, and eleven more in different countries around the world? Like Dubai, Hong Kong and New York?’
Point taken, but I wasn’t going to kowtow.
‘Who did you see that evening?’ I asked.
He moved his hands to pick up a pen and twirl it between his fingers. ‘Just Tony. He came around just after five. We shared a beer. Everyone had pretty much gone by the time he left to go back to his own office.’
‘When was that?’
‘Well before six. We both had shed loads of work to get through.’
‘Did he have a family?’
Another frown. ‘You know this, surely.’
‘I’m asking because–’
‘Yeah yeah, you said the thing about relevance coming later. Yes, he had a family. Beautiful wife, two kids. He was devoted to them.’
Something in his voice wasn’t right so I said, ‘But?’
‘But what?’ His tone was irritated and defensive.
He looked at me and our eyes locked. I hoped he saw nothing but steely determination. ‘May I remind you,’ I said coolly, ‘who sent me.’
Marshall looked down at his lap. Let loose a long breath. ‘Okay.’ He lifted his head. ‘But you’ve got to promise you won’t tell Lily, Tony’s wife. And for Christ’s sake be careful what you say, and how you say it to George. He’d have ripped Tony’s bollocks off at the time, and God knows I don’t want his memory of Tony besmirched.’
I waited.
‘This is between us.’ He sent me a fierce look. ‘If you say I told you, I will deny it one hundred per cent.’
‘It’s between us,’ I echoed.
He closed his eyes briefly. Opened them. He looked down at his desk as he spoke.
‘Tony liked the girls… fancied himself as a bit of a ladies’ man. They didn’t seem to mind him either.’
I’d been ready for him to say that Tony was a closet gay with a gambling or BDSM addiction, nothing as straight as being a bit of a womaniser. My mind flashed to the gorgeous creature who’d arrived at 1810. Had she gone to see Tony? I brought out my laptop. Fast forwarded through the video until I came to her. I turned the laptop round. ‘Do you recognise this woman?’
Roger leaned forward. Took in the video’s details. ‘How the fuck did you get this?’ He sounded shocked.
I let the silence hang.
‘Jesus.’ He was blinking rapidly. ‘George is serious, isn’t he? He really does want to know.’
‘Do you recognise her?’
He had another look. ‘No.’
Then he took in the date and the time. He said, ‘Sweet Jesus. She was in the building then.’ He sounded genuinely stunned.
I didn’t answer. I let the video run until the middle-aged woman arrived. I pressed the pause button once again. ‘And her?’
He studied her at length, frowning. ‘No. Sorry.’
I switched off the video and snapped shut the laptop lid.
‘Both women were here?’ he asked. ‘That night?’
I’d worked out I got results perfectly fine if I didn’t answer any of his questions and kept asking my own, so I said, ‘Do you think the younger woman was Tony’s type?’
He stared at me. ‘You think she was here to see him?’
‘What do you think?’
‘In all honesty?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In all honesty.’
‘I think she’s too classy.’
‘In what way?’ I was genuinely curious.
He had to think about that one. ‘I’m not sure. She looks as though she’s from the upper side. I guess it’s her clothes.’ He shrugged. ‘He liked them more tarty, a bit more obvious.’
I was about to move on and ask about DI David Gilder and the detective’s police work on the case, but the sleek chrome phone on his desk buzzed. A woman’s tinny voice said, ‘Mr Palmer’s on his way up with Mr Abbott.’
I tried not to make an unseemly bolt for the door and rose in what I hoped was a casual fashion. ‘I’ve already seen George today,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
I didn’t offer to shake hands. Nor did Marshall. I walked out of his office. Tried not to run for the lifts. Tried to keep a steady pace across the foyer.
It wasn’t until I was outside and on the opposite pavement and passing Fortnum & Mason’s when the muscles in my body finally relaxed.
Chapter 25
I stood waiting for Susie beside the entrance of MI5, housed in Thames House, an impressive Grade II listed stone building decorated with statues on the north bank of the River Thames. The Secret Intelligence Service’s distinctive “ziggurat” fortress-style building, often mistaken for the Security Service’s HQ, was on the other side of the river. The tide was as high as it was going to get. The water swirled in dark shapes and shadows beneath a looming cement sky.
I looked at the closed-circuit TV cameras dotted around and felt amazed that I’d married such an incredible woman. A real live spook.
I was still mentally shaking my head in wonder when my spook swept out of the doors and came towards me. She was wearing a tiny-checkered pencil skirt suit and high heels. Her hair was pinned up in a no-nonsense knot and she looked smart and efficient and very, very sexy.
‘How do you run in those?’ I pointed at her shoes.
‘I don’t.’
‘But what if there’s an emergency?’
‘I kick them off. Or I put on a pair of trainers.’ She kissed my lips. ‘You’re looking smart. I like it.’
‘Perhaps I should dress up more often?’
‘Don’t,’ she said, smiling. ‘I like you the way you are. You’re the yang to my yin and I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
I hadn’t known anything about Taoism until I met Susie. She’d given me a beautiful black and white sculpture, a ball depicting the Taijitu symbol, on our first wedding anniversary, which sat on my desk at work. It was a stunning piece of art that invited you to touch it, feel its smoothness and weight. You couldn’t feel where the white stone connected with the dark, the point I supposed, since yin and yang describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Or something along those lines.
She looped her arm in mine and looked up at me.
‘Where to?’ I asked.
‘You’re meeting Gilder in a pub, so I thought we could go to Tachbrook.’
‘Don’t tell me, you fancy a chocolate éclair.’
‘Me?’ She pasted an innocent expression on her face. ‘Chocolate?’
Tachbrook was a bakery and patisserie on Tachbrook Street. I’d met her there before, when I believed she worked in the Home Office on Marsham Street, just around the corner from MI5. It was only a few streets away so I wouldn’t have to go far to get to the Lord Moon pub later.
We settled at the window. It had started to rain, a steady patter that dribbled down the window. We ordered coffee and pastries. Both came with a smile from a young man with pink stripes in his hair and a bolt through his eyebrow.
‘So,’ Susie said, biting into her éclair. ‘What’s new?’
When I got to the part about meeting the Saint in the corridor, she choked on her pastry. ‘Jesus Christ, Nick.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I had the smarts to look shamefaced.
‘You shouldn’t have gone there.’ She leaned forward, expression intent. ‘At least not without telling me. What if he’d abducted you? Or worse?’
I took a leaf out of my new investigative book and instead of answering, asked a question instead. ‘Do you think the Mayfair Group is a legitimate business?’
‘On the surface, sure, but if Abbott’s around it’s bound to have some murky bits. Property development’s a great way of laundering money.’
I brought out the lists of caretakers and employees Helen had printed off for me. Showed them to Susie.
‘Holy cow, Nick.’ She looked at me, astonished. ‘You’ll be taking over my job soon.’
I grinned, delighted to have impressed her. ‘Not bad for an amateur, eh.’
She scanned the list while polishing off the last of her pastry, licking the tips of her fingers until they were clean. ‘Nobody there rings any bells,’ she said. ‘But let’s pass it by Mark Felton tomorrow.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s Rob’s ex-case officer. He’s my boss… So you’ll have to behave. I’ve arranged for you to meet him tomorrow, first thing.’
My jaw dropped. ‘You have?’
‘Yup. We’re meeting him for breakfast in Pimlico. Then he and I can walk to work.’
For the first time, I felt as though I was making ground. I was getting more and more questions answered, and once I’d seen Mark Felton, maybe I’d know how to find Rob. I wanted to see my brother so much. I wanted to go sailing with him. Have a pint with him. Go walking along the shore, identifying the waders probing in the mud for shellfish and crabs, chatting about nothing in particular alongside the sound of curlews. I wanted to see my little brother and give him a hug. After punching him first, of course.
I was still daydreaming when Susie touched my arm, pointing at her phone and excusing herself from the table. I nodded and as she moved to the far end of the café to talk, I read the lists again. Then I rang the caretaker in Wandsworth, but he’d moved, no forwarding details. Next, I called the caretaker in Ealing, who’d stopped working for the Mayfair Group a month after Tony Abbott’s murder. The number rang and rang, and I was about to hang up when a man said, ‘Hello?’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Is that Mr Choudhuri? Mr Arun Choudhuri?’
‘Yes, it is. Who’s calling?’
‘Hi, my name’s Nick Ashdown. I wanted to talk about the time you worked for the Mayfair Group.’
Short pause.
‘What about it?’ His voice was cautious.
‘You were on duty on Friday evening the twenty-third August, am I right?’
‘Are you a journalist?’ Still wary.
‘No. Just someone wanting some answers as to what happened that night.’
‘Who are you again?’
‘I’m gathering information that I hope will find who killed Tony Abbott. I’ve been in touch with the police. They know I’m on the case.’
‘What, like you’re a private detective?’ He sounded amazed. ‘After all this time?’
‘Which is why I would like to talk to you.’
‘I can’t.’ He sounded surprisingly regretful. ‘Sorry. I signed a confidentiality agreement. I can’t break it.’
Excitement quickened in my gut. He knew something. He knew what had happened.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘But you were on duty that night, right?’
‘Yeah. But I can’t talk about it. No point in continuing this conversation. Sorry.’
Meticulously polite, he apologised once more, then hung up.
I brought up a map of London on my phone and punched in his address. Checked my watch. 6.30pm. I hoped Arun Choudhuri would be home this time the next day, because I was going to make a house call. By then I would have seen Rob’s boss as well as DI Barry Gilder.
Sophie returned, and I was going t
o give her an update but she said, ‘Sorry. I’ve got to go. There’s a bit of a flap on.’ Her eyes were bright and glittering, and although she pressed a swift kiss against my lips and said she could be late, don’t wait up, she wasn’t actually seeing me. She was already at work, wherever that was, and the adrenaline was obviously pumping.
I watched her go, her slim form exuding energy and focus, and I tried not to think where she might be headed, or whether it might be dangerous. There seemed little point since I could do nothing about it. She loved her job with a passion I admired, although admittedly, sometimes I resented the time it took her away from me. And imagining her pregnant or with a toddler in hand was almost impossible.
I sighed, and in the interests of self-preservation and my general sanity, I turned my mind firmly away from my wife and to Rob and what I’d learned, and when I finally hit the pavement outside, I had a bit more of a spring in my step. I was getting closer to my little brother with every hour.
Chapter 26
Earlier, I’d read that the Lord Moon of the Mall pub used to be a bank, and it still exuded a sense of dignity. Behind the classic pale pink sandstone façade was lots of dark woodwork, arched windows and vaulted ceilings. It was impressive and imposing, the clientele mostly businessmen and women in suits – Whitehall civil servants and MOD employees – and the odd tourist.
I couldn’t see Gilder so I went to the bar and ordered a pint of Butcombe bitter. I was about to pay when he said at my shoulder, ‘Same for me, if you don’t mind.’
Pints in hand, we sat at a table next to a bookcase. Gilder took a long draught of beer, emptying the first quarter of his glass.
‘Tough day?’ I enquired.
‘Always is.’ He put down his glass, licked his lips. Exhaled. ‘So where’s this video?’
I brought out my laptop and he shifted his chair so he could see the screen clearly. I angled my body in order to watch his face. Pressed play.
It took him a nanosecond to realise what the video was about. ‘Where the hell did you get this?’
‘Have you seen it before?’
He didn’t respond. Nor did he move his gaze from the screen.
