A Murder of Magpies (29 page)

Miranda gave an explosive giggle. “He
said
that?”

I was already feeling better. “Apparently it's a new spin on publishing etiquette. I'm still not sure if it's professional to fuck your own authors or not. We didn't have time to cover that.” I shook my head, as if trying to shake away an irritating wasp. “Never mind. What was it you started to say?”

“Nicholas Meredith has been ringing all morning. I didn't catch you before you went into the meeting, and he's called twice more since then. Oh, and a couple of your book fair meetings have moved. I've rescheduled them, and also a lunch. It's all in your book.” She nodded to my desk diary, which to her—despair? amusement?—I insisted on still using, although I'd also accepted that we keep another, shared, online diary.

None of those dates mattered, and I didn't even bother to look to see what the changes were. Nick was always busy. If he was calling over and over, it was important. I called him straight back.

He didn't bother with any preliminaries. “Ian Childs had a peculiar phone call yesterday.”

“From whom?”

“His ex-landlady. She said he'd sent people round to rent his old room. He thought she was drunk: She was crying, and shouting. He didn't know what she was talking about, but figured it had something to do with Nate Davies.”

“It did. I was the ‘people.' I went over there to see if—” I stopped. “Say that again,” I demanded.

“What? Say what again?”

“What did you call Jonathan Davies? ‘Nate'?”

“Yes, that's how he was known: Nathan from Jonathan. It's uncommon but not unheard of.” Nick was, understandably, bewildered.

“What does he look like—Davies?”

“Thin. Tall—”

I broke in again. “About six foot, with long, slightly greasy dark-brown hair, a beaky nose, and bad skin?”

“That's him. Wait, I thought you said you had never seen him. Hell, I thought we were looking for him.”

“We've found him.” I hung up. I couldn't stop to explain it all to Nick. I sat staring at the wall in front of my desk. I had been followed by Jonathan Davies—also known as David Nathanson, who had barely troubled to give me a false name at Kay's. Why? Why was he following me, and why did he not care if I knew who he was? Nick and his tutor Oliver Heywood had not thought he was stupid. So either he meant me to recognize him, or he had completely lost touch with reality. He'd been a bit weird, but I hadn't thought any more than that.

Either my talking to him at the Lewises' party or my visit to Gloria Ramsay had triggered something. I sat turning it over for a good ten minutes, but I couldn't get any further.

I grabbed my jacket and told Miranda to tell everyone I was ill, and had gone home. When I got to the street I flagged down a cab and told the driver to take me to Roxfield Road. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there, but if my just talking to his landlady had made Davies break cover, then it seemed worth paying a second visit. But as we drove up I hesitated. Everything looked so normal. Mothers were taking their children to the park, retirees walked their dogs, a woman festooned with carrier bags was heading back from a trip to the supermarket. Just an average day on an average street. I felt silly. I rang the bell before I could think better of this lunatic impulse.

The curtains moved, then Gloria Ramsay opened the same window she had talked to me through the day before. “Yes? Can I help you?” I turned around to face her, and she made a small noise, like a whimper of fear. I rarely have that effect on people, and it was startling. Her transformation from the lady librarian of the day before was even more so. She looked like hell. Her hair wasn't brushed, and it was sticking up in back, pressed into a peak by her pillow. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. I looked closer. It wasn't that she'd put them back on. She hadn't taken them off. The shirt was creased and limp, with makeup around the neck; the polyester suit was rumpled and twisted. Powder had clotted in the creases around her nose and mouth, and eyeliner had run into the bags under her eyes. Her whole face was swollen and red, as if she'd been crying for a long time.

I should have felt sorry for her, but I just became more determined. “We need to talk.”

“No. I don't know anything. Go away.” She slammed the window down, but I could see through a chink of curtain she was watching me.

I rang the doorbell. Nothing. I rang again. She opened the window. “Go away.”

“No. Let me in.” My face was fierce, and so was my voice.

She made the whimpering sound again and stepped back. I waited a minute, then put my hand on the bell and leaned on it. It shrilled on and on. After a full minute I stopped, and I said loudly, so that she could hear me through the window, “If you don't open the door
now,
I'm going to get the police.” For what, I had no idea. I didn't think I'd need to.

I didn't. The door opened a chink, and Gloria stood behind the chain.

If the threat of the police got me this far, whatever she knew, I was determined to find out. “Open up.” I sounded like a cop myself. Maybe it was contagious.

“What do you want? Go away.”

I stared into her eyes, willing myself to bully this pathetic woman. “If you don't let me in in the next ten seconds, I will go for the police.” I lifted my wrist ostentatiously. My watch doesn't even have a second hand.

She caved in. She pushed the door to enough to slip off the chain, and opened it another six inches, as though by making the entry narrow she'd keep the worst horrors out. I stood in the hall and let my eyes adjust. All the curtains were drawn in the sitting room, and the doors to the rooms at the back and upstairs were shut. The only light was filtered through the dusty fanlight. The hall was painted what had probably once been cream, but with age and cigarette smoke had turned a pale brown. The carpet was brown. The dust turned the light brown. It was like stepping into a boardinghouse fifty years before. Gloria Ramsay stood staring piteously at me, slowly rubbing her hands together. She couldn't be more than five foot, and she looked upward pleadingly.

“Tell me,” I said, mimicking Jake this morning. I had no idea what I was talking about, but she didn't have to know that.

“Please. It's not my fault. I didn't know until yesterday, after you came. You must believe me.”

“Tell me. I'll decide whether to believe you depending on the details.” A faint hope was rising. This might just work.

“No. He'll kill me if he knows you're here. When you rang the bell he went up, but—” She looked sick at the thought.

“Up?” If I just echoed what she said, I might get enough to find my bearings.

“I didn't say that. No. You must go. Please. Now.” She was quivering with fear, and making ineffectual little dabs at me, trying to push me toward the door.

“We're going up. Come on.” I didn't wait for her, but headed for the stairs. She grabbed my arm but it was easy to shake her off. I had a quarter of a century and five inches on her.

There were three doors on the landing, all shut. The first was a bedroom, a spare room by the look of it. It was brown, too: brown corduroy curtains, brown candlewick bedspread, brown carpet. There was nothing there to accuse her of, apart from Decorating While Depression. That wasn't an indictable offense, so I closed the door and opened the next one. A bathroom. I closed it and approached the final door. Gloria redoubled her efforts. I paid her no attention.

As I put my hand out for the knob the door flew open. Standing there was Jonathan Davies. He looked even thinner and dirtier than he had at Anthony and Kay's. He also looked—it was hard to say. Exalted? I sniffed. Not dope. Maybe something else. Maybe crazy. What a cheery thought.

But he'd followed me first, not vice versa. I was buggered if I was going to let him scare me now. I moved forward, forcing him back into the room. The curtains were drawn here, too, and it was even darker than the hall. I was fully in the room before I realized there was someone else there.

I heard him before I saw him, a heavy, stertorous breathing, like an asthmatic in the middle of an acute attack. I flicked my eyes over quickly. I didn't want to be sandbagged by one of Jonathan's friends. Someone was on the bed, lying down. It took a full ten seconds before I worked it out in the dim light, then I pushed Jonathan aside and stumbled toward the bed. “Kit!”

He was lying on his back, with his eyes closed. His breathing didn't change when I called his name, and when I reached out and touched him it continued in the same labored way. I shook his shoulder. Nothing.

I spun around. Jonathan had moved toward the bed, and was looming over me. “What have you done? What's the matter with him?”

He smiled, and held up a hypodermic. Gloria whimpered again, and he inclined his head toward the door, without taking his eyes off me. “Gloria. Get out.” She turned and ran.

I tried to move past Jonathan, but he blocked me easily. I called after Gloria's retreating back: “Gloria. Call the police!”

Jonathan giggled, which was the eeriest thing I'd ever heard. Up to now I'd been worried and angry. Now I was frightened. “What are you doing? Why have you done this?”

He giggled again and walked toward me, holding the hypodermic out with the plunger ready. I backed away, but couldn't get past him to the door. The back of my legs hit the end of the bed and before I could try to reach the window he was on top of me. I felt a prick in my arm, and we stared at each other, our faces as close as lovers.

 

14

I was swimming underwater, heading up to the surface. I could see the light above, and I was going up and up. Bits and pieces floated past me, bits of dreams, bits of my life, colleagues from work, Jake, Bim Lewis. That seemed perfectly normal, and I brushed past them, focusing only on the light.

I opened my eyes and there was Mr. Rudiger's concerned face. Of course. I'd been burgled and I was in his sitting room. I turned my head to look for the tree outside his window, but it wasn't there. Instead, Nick Meredith was standing with his back to the light, a worried look on his usually genial face. Not burglars. Mr. Rudiger was an impostor. I wasn't supposed to trust him.

I sat up abruptly, pulling away from his hand. The river came rushing back, and then I was sick. Someone was holding a bowl, and my head, gently stroking the hair back from my sweaty forehead. I finished and lay back. It was still Mr. Rudiger, and now Nick moved forward.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded fretfully. I looked around the cream-colored, anonymous room. “And where is ‘here'?” I sounded petulant even to myself.

“You're safe now,” came Nick's reassuring rumble. Except it wasn't reassuring. Why hadn't I been safe before? He saw that I had no idea what was going on, and filled in. “You're in hospital. You've been doped to the eyeballs with some sort of tranquilizer shit that Jonathan Davies gave you.”

Now I remembered. “Kit?” I said.

“He's down the hall, in better shape than you, actually. Last I heard, he was offering his kingdom for a pair of trousers so he could go home and write a piece about it for the
Sunday News.
”

I giggled weakly. That sounded about right.

“What are you two doing here?” I opened my eyes wide. “Mr. Rudiger! What are you doing here?”

He sat looking at me, smiling gently. He hadn't let go of my hand since I'd been sick. The door opened and Jake walked in. He was incandescent with rage. It came off him in great waves. He came over to the bed and loomed over me. “If you
ever
do that again—” He didn't finish.

I was ill, not brain-dead, and besides, being in hospital gave me rights. One of those was the right not to be bullied. “I don't know what happened, so I can't possibly say I won't do it again. Instead of shouting at me, why don't you tell me what the hell is going on? I went to see Jonathan Davies and then—” I didn't finish, either. The thought of the hypodermic and Davies' giggle was going to haunt me for a long time. “What about the dead man you pulled from the river?”

Jake rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “He's a dead man we pulled from the river. Unidentified. It happens. We've got a murder investigation, it just isn't Kit's. The DNA test results came in about an hour after you found Kit: no match with the sample from his sister.” He shrugged. “As for you, you're lucky. You've got good friends.” He nodded to Mr. Rudiger, who took up the story.

“When you didn't come home last night I was worried. You'd promised to come up and see me after work, and it wasn't like you, I thought, to forget. I rang, but there was no answer, and I was sure I hadn't heard you come in.” He flushed slightly. “I usually know who is in the house.”

Nick joined in, as a sort of Greek chorus to the action. “So he rang your office in the morning, and your assistant said you'd gone home ill the afternoon before.”

“Which I knew was not the case,” Mr. Rudiger picked up the story again. “She said you hadn't been in that morning, and that you hadn't rung. Now you had an appointment that you'd missed. It wasn't in character. I tried to ring your friend,” he nodded toward Jake, “but he was out supervising an interview with someone they'd just arrested for murder—” I looked over at Jake and he nodded, putting his hand on my shoulder to tell me to wait. He left it there, warm and comforting. Mr. Rudiger continued placidly, “I couldn't explain the problem to the person in his office. He thought I was just a silly old man. He explained to me that young ladies today sometimes do stay out all night.” He peeped at me demurely out of the corner of his eye, and I felt a laugh bubbling up. “But I knew that if that had been the case, you would have rung. You'd told me about your meeting with Mr. Meredith here, and his name was familiar to me—”