Mixing With Murder (34 page)

I signed my statement and came out of the police station into the afternoon sun. There she was, right there, walking across the car park towards the gate ahead of me.

I called, ‘Lisa!’

She turned and waited for me to catch up with her. She didn’t look pleased to see me.

‘So,’ I said. ‘They’ve let you out.’

‘Compassionate grounds,’ she said coldly. ‘My dad’s in hospital. My mum needs me. I’ve made a statement, anyway.’

‘I heard about your dad,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sorry for your parents.’

She scowled furiously at me. ‘But for you, they wouldn’t have found out anything about this! This wouldn’t have happened!’

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Don’t blame me. You should have told them the truth from the beginning. And your parents don’t know the half of it, do they?’

‘Get lost,’ she advised me. ‘I don’t have to talk to you. I don’t have to talk to anyone, not even the police any more, until my lawyer gets here.’

‘What lawyer?’ I asked.

‘Mickey’s sending him down from London. I just phoned.’ She gave me a little smile of triumph. ‘He said I shouldn’t have made any statement but phoned for a lawyer first. Anyway, now he says sit tight with the statement I’ve made and wait for my legal adviser.’

‘We’re not talking about Filigrew, are we?’ I gasped.

She looked surprised. ‘Filigrew? That funny little man who does odd legal work for Mickey? No, of course not. Mickey’s engaged a real top-notch man.’

She swung on her heel and walked off towards the gate.

Flabbergasted isn’t too strong a word for how I felt. I stood where I was until I heard my name called and saw Ganesh signalling to me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked absently, my mind still with Lisa.

‘I had to make a statement, too,’ he said huffily, ‘about what I saw down by the river and the fracas in Ned’s flat.’ He peered at me. ‘You’ve got a black eye coming there.’

‘Are you surprised? You didn’t pull her off me!’

He looked offended. ‘Was it my fault? I was stuck in a beanbag with a body-builder sitting on top of me.’

I grinned. ‘You looked like an upturned tortoise, feet waving in the air, unable to right yourself.’

‘Thank you. Who designed beanbags? Stupid things.’ He pointed after Lisa. ‘What about her?’

‘Mickey’s hired a good lawyer for her. That’s not his baby, Ganesh. I’m sure of it. I think it’s Ivo’s.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Ganesh dourly. ‘If it turns out you’re right about that and Allerton finds out, it won’t be a lawyer he’ll be hiring to take care of Lisa, but a hit man.’

‘How’s he going to find out? Lisa and the lawyer will put up a cast-iron defence to any accusation of murder and the police will buy it. She’s clever, Ganesh. I hate to admit it, but she’s one very smart person.’ I turned to look at him. ‘That girl’s a murderer, Ganesh. I know she is. But Mickey’s wizard lawyer will get her off, Mickey will marry her and they’ll go off and live in a luxury Spanish villa with a kidney-shaped pool.’

‘How do you know the shape of the pool?’ he asked, smiling down at me. He was growing his hair long again, much to his uncle’s annoyance. Strands of it rippled in the warm summer air.

‘Julie told me. Anyway, those places always have kidney-shaped pools. I’ve seen pictures. There’s no justice, Ganesh.’

Ganesh took my arm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let the local police sort it out. And don’t worry about justice. That has a way of getting done. Let’s go home.’

Chapter Thirteen

By the time we got back to London my wrist had swollen up like a balloon, so stiff I couldn’t move it, and was very painful. At Ganesh’s insistence we went directly from Paddington to the nearest A and E department.

They took my details and asked me how I’d come to hurt the wrist, also get the black eye which had developed nicely on the journey from Oxford, to the great interest of other train passengers and some signs of embarrassment on the part of Ganesh. A large stout lady sitting opposite us had kept glaring at him. As she came to leave the train she declared, on rising to her feet and fixing Ganesh with a gimlet eye, ‘There is no action lower than that of a man who raises a hand to a woman!’

She then sailed majestically away leaving poor Ganesh with his mouth open and she’d gone before he could rally and explain he hadn’t been responsible.

‘Never mind, Gan,’ I said to him. ‘She probably wouldn’t have believed you.’

This did not make things better and the remaining passengers had now caught on and we got even more curious, sympathetic (for me) and critical (for him) looks. It was mostly because of this, I fancy, that he’d insisted we go straight to A and E on arrival in London.

In reply to the nurse’s question now about the cause of my injury, I told her I’d been in a fight, which was true. She didn’t ask how or why or with whom. It was a pretty normal explanation for injury in their world. She just wrote it down.

‘What about you?’ the nurse then asked Ganesh.

‘What about me?’ returned Ganesh, nettled.

‘Keep your hair on,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I only want to know if you were injured in the same fight.’

‘Well, I wasn’t,’ said Ganesh.

‘Don’t be rude!’ I muttered at him as the nurse scurried away with her clipboard.

‘What did she mean, then? What’s it got to do with me? I’m just here with you, as a friend, supporting you.’

‘Yes, thank you, Gan.’

We sat for an hour after this before seeing anyone. During this time Ganesh sat with his arms folded, glowering at everyone else and muttering that if we lingered there much longer we’d catch some horrible disease. I pointed out that A and E didn’t deal in diseases, but in accidents and unforeseen medical emergencies. How did I know, asked Ganesh, what diseases all those other people waiting might harbour?

I told him he was beginning to sound like his uncle. This didn’t improve his mood and he sulked. I found a copy of the
Sun
newspaper which someone had left behind and read that, which didn’t take long. Fortunately I was called at last and after examination sent along for X-ray. We then had to wait for the result. The wrist wasn’t broken, thank goodness, only badly bruised. I was advised to rest it, as if I could do anything else with it. They gave me some painkillers.

All in all, it was quite late when we left the hospital. Ganesh was still in a sulk and mumbled at intervals all the way back to Camden. I gave up trying to listen: it all seemed to be on the same theme, i.e. how complicated I made his life and why couldn’t I be like everyone else?

When we arrived he said loudly and distinctly, and fixing me with a stern gaze, that he had to go straight home to Hari to explain what had happened in Oxford. He thought it better I didn’t go with him. If I walked in with a black eye and arm in a sling, Hari would probably pass out among the magazine racks and suffer a prolonged nervous breakdown after he came round. Moreover he, Ganesh, had had enough of people giving him funny looks and asking leading questions.

‘First that fat woman on the train and then the nurse at A and E. All the other people in the waiting area were giving me odd looks, too, like I’d committed some crime.’

I told him he was being neurotic. But I wasn’t anxious to have Hari lecturing me on the entirely foreseeable results of my rash behaviour and was happy enough to go on to my place alone.

Sadly, alone was what I found myself when I got there. No sign of Bonnie and enquiries among my fellow tenants and neighbours failed to turn up any hopeful news. The flat had an empty, abandoned feel to it. Dust had settled on all the surfaces and the jar of marmalade on which I’d breakfasted only that morning hadn’t been returned to the fridge and had managed to grow a coat of grey mould already. I threw it in the bin. Then I put Bonnie’s dog bowl in a cupboard out of sight. Not because I feared she wasn’t now ever coming back; I refused even to consider that. But the sight of the unused dog bowl was more painful than the throbbing wrist.

Over the days that followed several people told me they thought they’d sighted Bonnie in a variety of locations. I went immediately to every one but didn’t find her or anyone there who’d seen a dog like her. Erwin’s musician friends were especially keen to help but their sightings of her were, I suspected, often influenced by banned or semi-banned substances which made it difficult to be sure what they had actually seen. One of them brought me a very small dog with very little hair which he said he’d found in the street. It was a nice little thing but it wasn’t Bonnie and I told him to take it back where he’d found it or to the RSPCA.

‘You sure this ain’t your dog?’ he asked, uncomprehending, picking it up in one hand and staring at it thoughtfully. The little dog stared back with bulging eyes.

‘Yes, I’m really sure. My dog is a bit bigger than that one.’

‘Bigger, right!’ he said, put the mini-dog in his jacket pocket and departed.

Two days later he was back with a bewildered Doberman on a length of string. I explained that was too big and begged him to return it immediately to the backyard of the drug dealer from whom he’d probably abducted it. I watched them leave. The Doberman seemed to have taken a fancy to him and returning it might not have proved so easy.

Next I was asked to return to Oxford for the formal opening of the inquest on Ivo. Lisa was there, accompanied by a chap in a City suit with an expensive briefcase. This would be the lawyer Allerton had hired to watch over her interests. Pereira told the court that the deceased had been identified by a cousin (I assumed this to be Jasna but she wasn’t there in person). He was Ivo Simić, who had been working as a doorkeeper at a club in London. I was asked to explain how and where I’d found the body. The inquest was then adjourned. The coroner said he understood the police were awaiting forensic reports and making some further inquiries.

At this I caught a fleeting expression of alarm on Lisa’s face, but the smart lawyer whispered in her ear and she relaxed. My heart sank. Whatever questions came out of the further inquiries, the pair of them were pretty sure they had answers.

When the inquest was resumed, not long afterwards, there were more people there. Lisa appeared escorted not only by the lawyer but by her mother, who looked pale and drawn and wore black. Hovering protectively over the pair of them was Mickey Allerton himself, sporting a black tie. I deduced from this that Paul had probably passed away and Mickey had taken up the role of man of the family. I was sorry if this was the case. I’d liked Paul and sympathised with his situation. Nor did I like Mickey making himself prominent as the family’s protector. It reinforced my belief that this inquest was unlikely to turn out as I might wish.

I stole a look at Lisa. She was also very pale and wore a dark trouser suit, the jacket bulging a little over her stomach. She had tied her hair back with a black ribbon. But she took the stand to give her account in a composed manner. She left London, she explained, after a dispute with her employer. This had all proved to be due to a misunderstanding but at the time she had been upset and returned home to Oxford. Simić had followed her and made contact. She knew him to be a violent and unpredictable man. She went to meet him as arranged because she did not want him to come to her family home. Her father was in poor health. He had since passed away.

There was a short break during which she sipped a glass of water, was asked if she wished to sit down, declined the offer, sniffed into a nice clean handkerchief, and carried on. She had also arranged to meet Francesca Varady, a private detective sent by her employer and she asked Simić to come to the same place, but earlier, as this was convenient for her. She took with her to the meeting a grass snake which lived in the garden of the family house because she knew that Simić was afraid of snakes. She carried it in a cloth bag. She had handled the snake before and wasn’t afraid of it or of being bitten. Or the smell, she added.

‘The smell?’ asked the coroner, interested. He had appeared impressed by Lisa’s lack of fear of snakes. He probably didn’t suffer as Ivo had done from ophidophobia. But most people were nervous around snakes, I supposed.

‘They can discharge a smelly substance as a defence,’ she explained. ‘But Arthur knew me.’

‘Arthur, Miss Stallard?’

A blush and prettily contrived confusion on the part of the witness. ‘We called him that. He was a sort of pet.’

By now, I thought sourly, she had added the coroner to her list of pets. But then, she looked such a nice girl, standing there. Pretty, apparently frank, well-spoken, bereaved and to top it all in what the Victorians liked to call an interesting condition.