Mixing With Murder (31 page)

Her face had turned a deathly white. ‘You can’t do this to me,’ she said very quietly and viciously.

‘Whatever I do to you,’ I told her equally quietly, ‘it’s nothing compared with what you did to Ivo.’

I think she knew then that I really had worked it out. Her blue eyes seemed to have changed colour, becoming dark fathomless pits. She turned aside and began to walk across the grass towards the exit. We followed her.

Ned’s flat was the first floor of the house next door to the Stallards in Summertown. It was at that front window I’d first noticed him, or rather noticed the curtain twitch which told me someone had seen me at the house next door. It seemed an age ago but it was only a week.

‘I don’t want my mum to see you,’ said Lisa, as we got out of Ned’s battered old car. ‘Dad’s not well. So make it quick, right?’

She scurried from the car to the front door and we tumbled after her in a disorderly gaggle.

‘Hurry up!’ she snapped at Ned as he fumbled for the key. ‘Let’s get inside!’

We climbed the stairs to the first floor. It wasn’t a bad flat, quite roomy. But it wasn’t a patch on the pad in St John’s Wood where Lisa had been installed by the lovesick Mickey Allerton.

Ned offered to make coffee, which we all declined. He looked relieved. We sat facing one another in two pairs, Ganesh and me against Ned and Lisa. The flat was furnished very much in the manner of a student let with odd furniture. It even had posters on the walls instead of pictures. Lisa took the only easy chair as of her right and lay back in it looking relaxed although her eyes were still dark and predatory.

I perched on a straight-backed dining chair of Edwardian vintage which must have been picked up in a junk shop. Ganesh got the only other available seat, a beanbag. He had to lower himself practically to floor level where he looked very uncomfortable with his knees stuck up in the air. That being the sum total of seating places, Ned stood behind Lisa’s easy chair and rested his arms on the back of it so that he hovered protectively over her.

‘Just tell her what happened, Lisa,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault. The guy came down from London to make her go back,’ he explained to us. ‘She didn’t want to go. She still doesn’t. Why should she?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t have to. Besides, she’s got a job lined up, working on a cruise ship, right, Lisa? That’s why she wants the passport.’

‘Right,’ said Lisa.

Ned looked down at her. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’ There was a note of bewilderment in his voice. I felt sorry for him. I had an idea his world was about to collapse.

‘I was going to,’ she said, glancing briefly up at his face. ‘I didn’t get a chance.’ She looked away from him quickly. Perhaps she also had an inkling of what the truth would do to him and even a twinge of conscience.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told Ned. ‘It isn’t true, anyway. There’s no cruise ship, no job dancing. She just wants to get out of the country and lie low somewhere.’

Lisa then lost her cool sufficiently to address me in a manner that was extremely personal and indecent. Ned looked amazed, never having heard the like from her before, probably. Ganesh, in the depths of his beanbag, looked deeply disapproving.

‘You’re losing it, Lisa,’ I said. ‘It’s all coming apart. You had it all set up nicely. But Mickey started to get possessive, didn’t he? And his wife took a dislike to you. I met Julie, by the way. She’s awfully cross with you. I think she’s having the locks on the flat changed today. You might not be able to get back in.’

‘The cow!’ said Lisa.

I wondered whether to tell her Julie had chopped up all Lisa’s designer wear but decided to withhold that detail for the time being.

‘She’s divorcing Mickey,’ I said, ‘and she wants the flat.’

‘I didn’t mean him to leave his wife!’ she snapped. ‘When he did it was a nuisance but not too much of a problem for me because he moved into a flat he’s got over the club and lived there. But then he started bringing his stuff over to my place and staying with me. I didn’t want him around all the time!’

‘Mickey’s the jealous type,’ I explained to Ned.

‘What do you mean, he’s been staying with you?’ demanded Ned of Lisa. All this had left him far behind.

‘She’s his mistress,’ I said. ‘I think that’s the traditional term for it. And just like the good old days, Mickey installed his mistress in a plush flat in St John’s Wood. Lisa’s circumstances had improved a lot since you visited her in that rented room in Rotherhithe. She’s been living in style.’

‘But you only worked for him as a dancer, Lisa,’ Ned said wonderingly, still unable to grasp the fact that she had been lying to him all along, and as yet he didn’t know the half of it.

‘Oh, come on!’ said Lisa brutally to him. ‘I had to have a stronger reason than that for leaving! The whole thing was getting so complicated! He started talking about us getting married and then we could all go to Spain—’ She broke off, but too late, and stared at me aghast.

‘All?’ I said, raising my eyebrows. ‘Just you and Mickey would make it “both”, wouldn’t it? But baby makes three, doesn’t it?’

‘Baby?’ gasped Ned.

‘How do you know?’ Lisa demanded. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles were white against the stretched skin the way they had been when I told her of Ivo’s death. But this time she wasn’t acting.

‘I saw the remains of the pregnancy testing kit box in your bathroom. And I knew there had to be a really good reason why you ran away like that, especially from all that luxury. Is that why you wear all those baggy knitted sweaters? You don’t have the trim waistline you had a few weeks ago?’

There was a fraught silence. Ned was shaking his head from side to side as if he’d got something lodged in his ear.

‘Harry the doorman’s wife, Cheryl, put that idea in my head,’ I explained to Lisa. ‘When she talked to me about dancers having good figures.’

Lisa said quietly but with extraordinary venom, ‘I don’t have to discuss it with you, Fran, or with anyone else. Please give me my passport. I’ve booked a seat on a flight this evening. Yes, I do want to get away from Mickey.’

‘And from the police,’ I said. ‘You killed him, Lisa, didn’t you? You killed Ivo.’

Ned burst out, ‘No! How could she? You saw him. He was a big fellow. She couldn’t harm him. She only . . .’ but then fell silent. ‘You didn’t, did you, Lisa?’ he asked. He sounded ready to burst into tears.

‘Of course not,’ said Lisa impatiently. ‘He fell in the river. I didn’t know he’d drown. My passport, please, Fran.’ She got to her feet and held out her hand.

‘Yes,’ said Ned, rallying and staying loyal to the last. ‘If it is her passport, Fran, you ought to hand it over.’

‘In good time. First let’s all go and see a friend of mine here in Oxford,’ I said. ‘Her name is Hayley Pereira and she’s a detective-sergeant . . .’

I didn’t get to finish. Lisa threw herself at me. She caught me unawares, hitting me foursquare like a battering ram. My chair toppled backwards and I crashed to the floor, Lisa on top of me. She was scrabbling at my jacket pocket, trying to tear it open and extract the passport. I was winded by the fall and struggled to fend her off. She was fit and very strong. Ganesh was struggling up from his beanbag to come to my aid but Ned darted forward and pushed him back, holding him down.

‘Give me my passport, you bitch!’ Lisa hissed in my face and we struggled together on the floor.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a scrap and normally I’d have been well able to take care of myself. But this time I was handicapped by the knowledge that my opponent was pregnant. As a result, I couldn’t do several things I might otherwise have done. In the end, I placed the palms of both hands flat against her face and pushed with all my strength. She tried to bite me, as I knew she would, but it isn’t easy to bite a flat surface. Her grip on my jacket slackened as she took one hand from it to tug at my hands over her face. I managed to wriggle out from beneath her. Before she could turn and grapple with me again I seized a hank of her long fair hair and wrapped it round my fist.

‘Ow!’ she yelled as I jerked her head backwards.

‘Let go of her!’ roared Ned. He forgot Ganesh and leapt towards us. He hauled me away from Lisa but I still had tight hold of her hair and she was still yelling blue murder.

‘Let go!’ shouted Ned and brought the side of his hand down in a chopping motion on my wrist.

The pain was excruciating. I released Lisa’s hair. She scrabbled to her feet and made for the door. Holding my wrist, I dashed after her. Ned and Ganesh, who had finally wriggled out of his beanbag, followed. They got wedged together at the top of the stairs while Lisa and I clattered down. She pulled open the front door and dashed out into the street with me in close pursuit.

She made for her own front door and hammered on it. ‘Mum! Mum! Let me in!’

I’d caught up now and she turned and aimed a kick at me as she hunted in her pocket, presumably for her door key.

Behind her the door flew open and she catapulted back into the hallway of her family home to land at her mother’s feet.

‘Lisa?’ Jennifer gasped.

‘It’s all right, Mum!’ Lisa jumped to her feet. ‘Just shut the door and keep
her
out!’ She pointed at me.

There was a movement at the rear of the hall and another person moved forward to join us.

‘Lisa Stallard?’ asked Hayley Pereira.

Lisa gaped at her. ‘Who are you?’

‘Lisa darling,’ stammered Jennifer. ‘This policewoman has just come wanting to talk to you. I told her you were out. What’s going on?’

Lisa was as white as a sheet, pressed back against the open front door. She looked like the trapped animal she was between Pereira and me. Jennifer, her face as white as her daughter’s, put her arms round Lisa protectively.

‘I didn’t kill him!’ Lisa squealed in a strange high-pitched voice. ‘I didn’t kill him!’

‘It’s all right, darling,’ Jennifer was saying, ‘it’s all right. Don’t be frightened. Sergeant Pereira, it’s a mistake, my daughter—’

There was a squeak of wheels and we all looked up. Paul Stallard was attempting to manoeuvre his chair through the doorway at the far end of the hall. The space was wide enough but he was agitated and in his haste he was awkward. The chair struck the door frame on one side and he had to reverse and try again. This time he struck the door frame on the other side. He was growing ever more fretful and frustrated.

‘What is it?’ he shouted above the banging and scraping. ‘What is going on? What’s all the damn noise? Who are all these people? Jennifer! Come and help me with this bloody chair!’

Lisa put out her hand as if to stop him advancing any further. ‘No, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘No, Dad, please no . . . Don’t come out here. I don’t want you to hear this.’

Chapter Twelve

‘Well, Fran,’ said Hayley Pereira. ‘You haven’t been exactly helpful, have you?’

Why is it the police like to be so sarcastic? They lead frustrated lives, if you ask me, and it has to find its outlet somewhere. They seldom show any gratitude, that’s for sure. I had worked the whole thing out for them and was prepared to tell them all about it. Yet here I sat about to be accused of lack of cooperation.

Pereira was wearing her peacock-blue cotton shirt and a denim jacket and pants. I wondered who did her laundry. Every time I saw her she looked crisply ironed and bandbox-fresh.

I, on the other hand, looked hot and bothered after my tussle with Lisa on the floor of Ned’s flat, my jeans needed a wash and my T-shirt was torn where Lisa had wrenched it. There was no mirror in here but I had a feeling my right eye was swelling. It felt puffy and when I closed the left eye, the vision in the right one wasn’t as good as it had been. My wrist was painful and I hoped it wasn’t broken.

Our progress from the doorway of the Stallard home to the cop shop had been interesting. When Lisa realised Pereira meant to take her in, she tried to bolt for it. I was still in the doorway and she cannoned into me. I grabbed her and so did Pereira. Ned came in to the rescue and Ganesh piled in too, although I don’t think he had the faintest idea what he ought to do.

It was a real punch-up. Pereira had to call for back-up and we were all shoved into the back of a police van and sped off through the city. At the station, they separated us. After an interminable wait during which they didn’t even offer me a cup of tea, Pereira had arrived and marched me into an interview room.