by Alice Castle
Beth couldn’t believe how small a space such a fearsome sum took up. The pack, once they’d got it out of the slightly soggy, unmarked manila envelope, was about the thickness of a good page-turner – not a C J Sansom medieval whodunit, but certainly the size of an enjoyable Peter James police procedural. It wasn’t as long or as wide, though. It was more like, Beth realised, a huge chunk of Monopoly money. Funny, that.
She squinted at it more closely, just to make sure it didn’t have toy trains on it, but no, Queen Elizabeth’s head was blushing at her from piles of russet and rose £50 notes, or staring at her with a gimlet eye from the glacial purply-blues of an equally unfeasible number of £20 notes.
Part of her couldn’t help going off into a reverie about what one single mother could do with a windfall of £30,000. It represented a lot of PlayStation games. It would cover hundreds – Katie would probably say thousands – of new boots for her. Even a painter to come, finally, and redecorate her hall with those tins that had been hanging around for ever. Or maybe she could dump her Homebase magnolia and get an almost identical Farrow & Ball shade of antique cream for three times the price. They could get a dishwasher. And there would be holidays, truly swanky ones like the skiing jaunt Katie herself had just been on.
For a few moments, Beth wondered what she would have done if she’d laid hands on this wodge of money on her own – if Katie hadn’t suddenly become her partner in crime and tagged along this morning. She could have sneaked the money back to the house alone, tucked it under her mattress, and just enjoyed the feeling of being suddenly, unexpectedly, and unwarrantedly rich.
But it was the unwarrantedness that she knew she would always balk at. This money wasn’t hers and, however tempting it might be, she would never, could never have kept it. No matter how many tracksuit bottoms it would have bought for her Ben, she would never have slept easy in her bed again, knowing she’d basically stolen it. It was annoying, it was inconvenient, it was downright unfair, but truth and honesty were written deep into each strand of her DNA. And she could no more take and spend this money than she could leave Colin homeless or turn her back on a mystery. She just wasn’t that sort of person.
But where on earth had the money come from? Could it seriously be coincidence that a murder had taken place within yards of such a stash of cash? It seemed to stretch the bounds of credulity further than even the plots of Nina’s paperbacks.
True, it might well not be Smeaton’s; she couldn’t say for sure that he’d been about to fish it out of its hidey-hole and that was the reason he’d been killed. It was equally possible that he’d put it in the tree himself, to be picked up by someone else. Or maybe his killer had expected him to have the money on him, then attacked him in a frenzy when Smeaton had disappointed him, reneged on the deal, or refused to hand the cash over?
Beth realised it was quite unlikely that they would ever know exactly what had happened. She loved it when an investigation was all tied up with pink ribbons and solved to her satisfaction. But she knew – because Harry was always telling her – that it was much more likely than not that the truth would never be unravelled. Mysteries, in an enormous city like London, were often destined to stay mysterious.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t try her hardest to solve them. And now, with Katie at her side, she felt it was more likely than ever that she’d get to the bottom of this one. After all, she shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that if it hadn’t been for her flexible friend and those much-envied extra inches, the money would have stayed hidden in the tree – possibly for ever. Beth herself hadn’t been able to see that there was a little hollow high up in the trunk. And if she had spotted it, she would never have been able to get to what had been secreted there, unless she’d stood on top of Colin. The jury was out on whether even such a placid dog would have allowed such a thing. So, if she’d gone out alone, she would almost certainly have come back alone… and empty-handed. She owed this enormous clue – or perhaps she should say thirty thousand of them – to Katie.
Beth didn’t know whether Katie was having her own little fantasies about what she could do with the money. The difference between them was that Katie already had more than anyone could ever want. True, it wasn’t precisely her own money; Michael was the breadwinner. But he was an open-handed man with perfect and justifiable faith in his wife, and they shared everything fifty-fifty, as per their marriage vows. If Katie wanted anything enough, he would have been only too pleased to buy it for her, though she would never demand diamonds and furs.
Katie could have worn the most expensive designer clothes and lived at the most palatial address, but she left that to the likes of Belinda MacKenzie, who needed to prove something so much more than she did. Katie was happy with what she had. She might ostensibly steer clear of the more spiritual aspects of yoga, but she had already drunk deep of the message that materialism wasn’t helpful. Admittedly, she’d done that from the cushiest of yoga mats while bedecked in the latest Lululemon outfits. But hey, this was Dulwich.
It was time for Beth to shut away her own little flight of fancy. She gathered together the notes, suddenly stricken by the thought that they now bore nothing but the sticky finger marks left by her and Katie. But that was too bad. Surely no-one, not even Harry, could expect them to find a chunk of money like this and not want to know how much they’d stumbled across? But now that she thought about it, when had Harry ever shown a relaxed understanding at any of her manifestations of insatiable curiosity? She frowned under her fringe.
‘I’m wondering if we should have worn Marigolds while we were counting this?’
‘I did say that! But it’s a bit late now, isn’t it? Anyway, it was all pretty much covered in doggy drool, wasn’t it?’ Katie looked up from the piles on the table, an uncharacteristic and matching frown appearing on her own forehead. She was still tanned from her recent ski jaunt, and her blonde hair, glowing skin, and air of boundless health radiated through the kitchen and made Beth feel a little like a pit pony by comparison. These winter months were hard on those with her Celtic colouring. Mind you, the summers weren’t easy either, with her milk bottle legs stubbornly refusing to change shade. And at least in the cold she could wear a big jumper and cover everything up, she thought, snuggling into her capacious sweater.
Just then, she looked up and spotted Colin, who was outside in the garden but panting up against the French window like a dog exiled from paradise. Teddy was bouncing around in the shrubs at the end of the little patch Beth called her own. She sincerely hoped he wasn’t on the scent of poor old Magpie. She’d been so much better than they’d ever hoped about the arrival of the old Labrador, but Teddy could well prove to be a step too far – as he was for almost everyone.
‘Ok, well, we know how much is here now. We’d better ring Harry again, see what he wants to do about it.’ Beth knew she was deriving a bit of solidarity from the ‘we’ here, and hoping it might shelter her from some of Harry’s inevitable wrath. They were bound to have done something wrong, in his book. Whether it was going to be finding the money in the first place, or finding it and taking it away, or taking it away and then counting it, was anyone’s guess.
As before, the call went through to Harry’s voicemail. But this time she left a quick précis of the situation, locking eyes with Katie as she did, so her friend could prompt her with any detail she’d forgotten. Katie, though, seemed happy enough with her version of events. Once she was off the phone, Beth looked again at the table – so many tins of Pedigree Chum; not that Colin was staying forever – and started to gather the money up with a sigh.
‘The fact that it’s a round £30,000 means it’s definitely no accident,’ she said, thinking slowly. ‘If it was £29,875 or something, then it might just be someone’s life savings they were taking to the bank…’
‘…when they got waylaid by a tree?’ Katie’s eyebrows were up in her hairline.
‘Well, true, but it would seem a bit less deliberate. To me, such an exact sum – it�
��s a payment.’
‘A ransom? Or blackmail?’
Beth shivered. Blackmail was such a horrible crime. She’d thought, once before, that she’d stumbled across it. It had turned out to be something else entirely, and she’d been glad.
‘If it was a ransom, wouldn’t we have heard about it? And maybe £30,000 is a bit low for a kidnapper?’
‘It doesn’t have to be a person, though. It could be anything. If Smeaton was this Slope – maybe it was a painting!’ Katie chirped.
Beth looked levelly at her friend. She was all for her input, and she knew herself how great it was to have a eureka moment during an investigation. But she did hope Katie wouldn’t be firing ideas out madly in all directions, especially if they then had to investigate each and every one. It could take them years to close the case.
‘We need to know more about Smeaton. That’s what this is all about – that man we found. The type of man he was should tell us what sort of crime we’re looking at. Why the attack was so frenzied. And why anyone would be hiding money in trees right near the murder scene.’
Katie shuddered delicately. ‘I hate that word, murder.’
‘You’d better get used to it,’ said Beth levelly. ‘It’s all part of the job.’
‘The job, ooh,’ said Katie. ‘I can’t help it; I do find it a bit exciting. More exciting than teaching stretch classes to Dulwich ladies, if I’m honest.’
‘I thought you loved teaching yoga,’ said Beth, aghast.
‘I did. I do. But day in, day out, the same old things… It’s nice to do something with a bit more variety. So, what’s our next step?’
Beth supressed a tiny smile. Katie might be all bushy-tailed now, but a bit of routine checking of alibis would soon have her yawning. She peered at her watch. ‘I think we should have a sandwich,’ she said.
Katie looked a little deflated. ‘I thought you were going to say, “grill some suspects” or something, well, really a bit more exciting.’
‘Well, I suppose we could grill a sandwich, if you like. But the trouble is, we don’t really have that many proper suspects yet, do we? There’s Kuragin, who’s such an oily charmer, he’s totally the type to sell a double bed to the Pope. I’d take every word he said with a mine of salt. Then I’d also add in Baz Benson, the man who originally discovered Smeaton, or Slope – I’ve read about him on Wikipedia. Bit of bruiser; I bet he’s got a sinister past. Or Rosemary Grey from the park. She’s pretty mysterious. And what about the son, John, that she kept mentioning? He and Mark were supposed to be such great friends, but from what she said, they’d had a falling out? Could there be something there, I wonder? And then there are those other two dog-walking ladies, Jules and Miriam. We’ve got to see Mum about them and Smeaton’s parents later. She’s promised me all the inside gen.’
This wasn’t true, of course. Wendy lived in a fog of impenetrable vagueness about everything except the game of bridge, but Beth had promised herself that her mother was coming up with the goods.
‘Ooh, Wendy, great. I haven’t seen her for yonks,’ said Katie.
Beth wished she could feel the same enthusiasm. She loved her mother, but families were complicated, that was for sure. Their relationship worked best when they had her blithe brother Josh between them as a buffer. His airy unconcern about absolutely everything acted as a balm: on Beth, who knew she fretted much too much; and on her mother, who seemed to find all her daughter’s life choices bewildering, and open to second-guessing and passive-aggressive criticism, which she was by no means adept at hiding.
Beth eyed Katie speculatively. She’d left a quick message for Josh, hoping he’d remember that far-off incident with trains when he’d been at Wyatt’s, but there was no telling when he’d pick it up or even if he’d get back to her. He was probably in the thick of one of his jaunts, though she supposed she shouldn’t really call them that. He’d turned his hobby into a highly lucrative career, trawling the world’s trouble spots and, so far, avoiding any injury or danger to himself in typical fashion. So, in the absence of her laid-back brother as protection from her mother, Katie would do nicely.
An hour later, Beth was slightly revising her opinion. Yes, Katie was certainly keeping the conversation flowing beautifully. She was so clever at drawing people out on their interests, and listening in what seemed, and almost certainly was, rapt attention and even fascination. But they were no nearer to getting to the nub of the matter which was consuming so much of Beth’s headspace. And Beth had heard more than enough about who’d played which card and why at the bridge club last night.
‘You see, if you bid one no trump, you’re really saying you have a balanced hand. Now ACOL would put your high card points at twelve to fourteen, but if you’re playing a strong no trump, then you’ll have fifteen to sixteen. And, of course, Lydia had absolutely no such thing! So, down they went, like the Titanic. All hands on deck!’ Wendy tittered gently, and Katie smiled in apparent enthusiasm.
‘I’d love to start playing bridge, wouldn’t you, Beth?’ She turned to her friend, eyes shining.
Beth looked at her in annoyance. She wasn’t sure if it was because Katie had left Teddy locked in his cage at home, but her friend seemed ridiculously carefree this afternoon, and full of frankly batty notions.
‘Maybe, in about three decades,’ Beth muttered mulishly, knowing Wendy wouldn’t bother to strain to hear her. Then she added more loudly, ‘Now, about these ladies we met, I’m pretty sure you’ll know them, Mum, won’t she, Katie?’
‘What?’ Katie seemed to be deep in reveries about her and Michael sweeping all before them at the bridge club. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, we met these ladies who know someone we, erm, came across… We wondered if you’d bumped into them.’
‘And why did you think I would?’ Wendy wrinkled up her brow a little and peered across the table, stirring her cup of Earl Grey tea with a tremulous hand and hesitating over adding a second sugar lump in a way that drove Beth mad. There was always a pause while Wendy seemed to be deciding whether or not to stop at a single cube… but she always then went on to have two. Without fail. Why not just plop in two, in the first place? Save all the fluttering and flummery? Beth fumed to herself.
She concentrated on taking deep breaths and waited for the irritation, which she knew was irrational and ridiculous, to subside. Why shouldn’t her mother take two sugars in her tea? Or twenty-two, if she so wished? But it was the semi-pretence that she only took one which got Beth’s goat. A goat that, she had a feeling, was going to get a lot more ravaged as the afternoon progressed.
‘Well, Wendy, Beth’s always saying you know absolutely everyone in Dulwich… and as you know, she never exaggerates,’ Katie said with a winning smile.
Wendy’s mouth quirked up at the corners. There was something about Katie’s approach that seemed to convince her that a gentle joke was being played on Beth. Beth wasn’t at all surprised to find that her mother found that quite irresistible.
‘Oh, you’re too kind, my dear. Well, I’ve lived here quite some while now. I couldn’t even begin to remember how many years it is—’
‘Coming up to thirty-eight,’ Beth mumbled.
‘—and I suppose I have met a few people in my time, yes,’ said Wendy, entirely ignoring Beth’s interjection. ‘Just tell me who you’re thinking of and I’ll let you know if I’ve come across them,’ she said confidingly to Katie.
Despite herself, Beth smiled. Her friend had played this so much better than she ever would have done, and it looked as though the softly-softly approach might just bear fruit. Then Katie turned to Beth with a wrinkled brow. ‘What on earth were their names again?’
‘Jules and Miriam. They’re dog-walkers, so you might well have come across them in the park, even if you don’t know them from bridge or from around and about…’
‘Jules and Miriam? Hmm.’ Wendy cupped her chin in her hand, settled a gauzy cashmere scarf more fetchingly around her throat, and seemed to go into a day-dream.
After
a few moments, Beth started to fidget, but Katie darted a fierce look at her and she managed to still her rebellious hands and feet, trying to compose herself and refuse to allow any irritation to show. On the surface at least. She took a deep breath and applied herself to her cappuccino instead. Katie had tried to re-route their little meeting to Jane’s instead of the original venue, Aurora, but Beth was pleased that she had prevailed. Though Jane’s was well known to produce hands-down the best coffee in the area, Aurora was always deservedly half-empty. Wendy, though she had protested a little at coming here, wasn’t much affected because she preferred tea anyway. And the fact that they weren’t being overheard by Belinda MacKenzie or any of her spies, was worth a thousand premium coffee beans to Beth.
Distract herself as best she might, Beth found her patience being stretched to its furthest limits as her mother fiddled with one of the innumerable necklaces strung about her neck like ribbons round a maypole. Wendy favoured the sort of outfits that even Barbara Cartland or the Queen Mother would have dismissed as hopelessly fussy, garlanded with extras like tinkling bracelets or today’s cascade of beads. Beth cast a baleful eye at them and tutted inwardly. If they’d been worth anything, she could at least have consoled herself with the thought that some distant day she could flog them and pay the school fees, should her boy make it over the final hurdle. But no, they were as worthless as empty promises.
Beth shifted in her seat, but to her surprise it was Katie who raked her chair back suddenly and fixed Wendy with a pointed look. ‘Anything spring to mind?’ she asked, stirring her cappuccino with unusual speed.
Wendy drew back a little and said, ‘Oh!’ in a tiny, high-pitched voice. Then, at last, she seemed to focus. ‘Um, what were those names again?’
‘Jules and Miriam!’ chorused Beth and Katie.
‘Yes, yes, Miriam and Jules, that was it. Well, I can’t really say I’ve ever… not really…’
Beth and Katie exchanged looks, both downcast. Beth never had terribly high hopes of Wendy coming up trumps – except in a bridge game, of course – but Katie had clearly pinned a lot on this. But just as they were resigning themselves to getting nowhere at all, Wendy piped up again.
