Picture of Innocence (33 page)

‘Had to. Thought it was the only way he was goin’ to buy my land. But the bastard cheated me. He lent Bernard the money in the first place – the land’s his, and I’m not gettin’ nothin’ for it.’ She leaned forward again. ‘That’s why the photograph’s important,’ she said. ‘ If he killed Bernard, I can get compensation for that. He’s left me without nothin’. If we can prove—’

Curtis shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you never think of anything but
money
?’ he said. ‘You were letting McQueen screw you while I was locked up in a cell!’

‘I was lettin’ Bernard Bailey screw me all the time, and you didn’t think nothin’ ’ bout that.’

‘That was different!’ And he
had
thought about it. Over and over again, ever since she’d told him what it was like.

‘No,’ she said. ‘ It’s just the same. Whether it’s Bernard or Mike McQueen or you. It’s just sex, and sex don’t mean nothin’.’

‘You bitch,’ said Curtis. ‘You bitch! I
killed
for you!’

‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t really, because if Mike McQueen did, he’s goin’ to pay for it.’

Curtis felt sick. He stood up. ‘I risked everything for you,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘You risked everythin’ ’cos you
wanted
me,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’ She stood up too. And from what I can see, you’ve not done too bad. Can’t put on the news without seein’ you. You’re famous. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

Curtis hadn’t wanted fame as much as he had wanted her. But he didn’t now. Not any more. He took one long, last look at her, then stumbled out of the room, out of the house, out of Rachel Bailey’s life.

DC Marshall thanked her for her cooperation, and left.

Gus was skulking in the background, as ever. As soon as Rachel had left at lunchtime, he had been demanding to know why she had told the police that she had seen Rachel’s car. She had told him to mind his own business, and had gone back into the surgery.

Then Marshall had come to check out her drugs, and her books, and she had had to explain that she didn’t always charge for treatment, not if it was something serious, and she knew the pet’s owner had no money, so yes, she did use quite a lot of drugs for which she received no recompense. And yes, there were a lot of unpaid bills, but the work had been carried out, and the drugs used or supplied, even if the animal’s owner hadn’t seen fit to pay for the treatment. ‘Is it all right?’ Gus asked, hovering in the surgery doorway.

She gave him a brittle smile. ‘ Do you mean is there an overdose-sized hole in my supply of morphine-stroke-morphine derivatives?’ she asked. ‘ Well, Gus, the answer is that no one’s ever likely to know, except me, not without a great deal of painstaking work. I expect DC Marshall is telling his boss that right now.’

She waited pointedly until he moved out of her way, and went into the sitting room, with him following behind, then he hovered in that doorway instead.

‘Are you
enjoying
this?’ he asked.

‘Enjoying it?’ Nicola thought about that. No, she couldn’t in truth say that she was enjoying it. Being suspected of murder by your husband was not an altogether enjoyable experience. But it did release you from so many bonds of gratitude. Because that was what it had been, all along. Not love. Gratitude.

Thank you, Gus, for not taking your fists to me every time I displease you in some way. Thank you, Gus, for being gullible enough to believe that the bruises you saw from time to time had been put there by some strange and persistent animal. Thank you, Gus, for choosing to believe that my mother wanted to have one failed pregnancy after another until it killed her, and for never thinking for one moment there was more to it than that. Thank you, Gus, for never asking me to explain why I was how I was, why I did what I did, because then I might have felt obliged to tell you that my father was a vicious, sadistic phoney with an overriding obsession about an old man’s money, and that I lived in such fear of him that I couldn’t even run away from him.

But all that’s over now, Gus, because he is dead, and his death has released me from fear. And now is not the time to start questioning what I’ve done, and why I’ve done it, because your questions have released me from gratitude. And these two things add up to the simple fact that I will only answer your questions if I wish to answer them, and I may not always tell you what you want to hear, or even the truth.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I am.’

‘Did you really see Rachel’s car?’

‘Does it matter?’

Gus came into the room properly, and sat down on the sofa, patting the seat beside him. Nicola joined him, looked at him expectantly.

‘Nicky,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Have you lied to the police?’

She smiled at him. ‘Yes, Gus,’ she said. ‘I have.’

Jack switched off the computer, and sat back. Terri was off somewhere celebrating over afternoon tea with her fellow SOWS, and his life was in real danger of crumbling into as many tiny pieces as the scones they were even now spreading liberally with jam and cream.

He didn’t have any jam and cream to stick his scone together again. Terri was saying things about Rachel Bailey that could get her into real trouble, all because he had made up lies about her. He had never intended any of this. And she had suggested, rather more acutely than obliquely, that Rachel might have murdered her husband, and had advanced as her reason for this theory the belief that Rachel and her boyfriend had invented a story about money in a safe. Now she would be telling her friends all about it, and eventually, it would reach the ears of the police.

His standard of living was about to take a nosedive, whatever he did. But now, he was going to have to go to the police himself, before they heard the rumour that Terri was so zealously spreading. And that would mean that Terri would have to be told the truth so that she stopped spreading it. And that would mean that his marriage was probably at an end.

Judy, armed with a publicity photograph of Curtis Law, and a still from Rachel Bailey’s TV interview, confirmed with staff and guests that the couple had indeed been at the hotel, in person, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. An American couple who had met them as they arrived had had a drink and a long chat with them about London; they had been very taken by Rachel, whose accent was so like their own, and who knew so little of London that they had actually taken her for an American at first. She had been like a little girl, they said. She’d never stayed anywhere like this in her life.

Neither had Judy, but she tried to look as though being there was second nature to her. She was, after all, a Londoner. Lapsed, perhaps, but a Londoner, all the same. Londoners, of course, did not as a rule stay in five-star hotels, but tourists seemed to think they did, so she had at least to look as though she wasn’t just as wide-eyed as Rachel had been. But she was.

Judy had hoped that the minicab driver might have seen Rachel with Curtis, and that it would be possible to trace him, so that they would have a definite sighting of her in the late evening, and she could get Lloyd off his new offensive, but the hall porter had explained that while they would, if the guest so desired, call a minicab company – he spoke the words like a particularly unpleasant oath – their usual practice was to light a small beacon at the rear entrance to the hotel, to which the black cabs which passed constantly would respond.

If a cab had been ordered for eleven o’clock, the hall porter had explained, he would have lit the beacon at a couple of minutes to eleven, and by eleven he could guarantee that a black cab would have come into the courtyard at the rear, which was where the entrance to the Executive Wing was. But obviously, there was no way of knowing which cab it had been.

Judy’s suggestion that this sounded a little hit or miss was met with scorn. They did explain to customers that they should perhaps allow ten minutes at peak periods.

She had then hoped that the porter who had seen Law into the cab might have seen Rachel, but that wasn’t to be either. The hotel had decided long ago that porters helping guests into cabs was simply not effective, cost or otherwise. The moment you had three lots of guests getting into cabs, one lot at least was going to have to open the door themselves, and feel slighted. You couldn’t have unlimited porters hanging about on the off chance. This system meant that guests did not feel obliged to press a pound coin into the hand of someone who had done absolutely nothing, and it worked a treat.

It did unless you wanted some positive evidence in a murder enquiry, thought Judy. Lloyd was looking every inch the busy London executive, talking on his mobile, from which Judy was beginning to think he would have to be surgically removed. He even looked stressed, which was the true stamp of executivedom; she had offered to drive, but he had said that he didn’t want to get stopped for speeding. She had enjoyed the journey, especially when they had plunged, as they had, right into the evening rush hour. She had sat back, window down, letting the sights and smells and noises soothe her as they had moved ten feet and then stopped behind tourist buses and black cabs, as they had been passed by motorbike couriers doing a slalom through the traffic, as they had given way to ambulances trying to get to emergencies before the Grim Reaper, while Lloyd had just got more and more frustrated.

When they had arrived, the car had indeed been whisked away; the executive car park was two streets away, and guests rang for their cars to be brought round to the Executive Wing entrance. Mrs Bailey hadn’t asked for her car until Monday morning, when they had brought it round, and loaded it up for her. She had left the hotel at eight a.m.

‘That was Alan Marshall,’ said Lloyd, joining her. ‘Apparently, we’re not likely to be able to confirm one way or the other about Nicola Hutchins’s drugs.’

‘Handy,’ said Judy. ‘If you want to bump Daddy off.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Lloyd. ‘He’s getting on with the legwork, so he might turn something up. But I want to talk to someone about this car park. See if there’s any way the system can be bypassed, and the car taken out without it going through reception.’

Oh, well, thought Judy. He was nothing if not thorough.

‘I’ve asked to see one of the suites as well,’ said Lloyd, and took a key from the receptionist.

Judy wondered if it was time to mention paranoia again, and unwillingly led the way down a narrow corridor into the Executive Wing. Lloyd slid the key in, awkwardly holding the door open for her, and as she walked in, she knew how Rachel had felt. ‘Wow,’ she said.

‘Not bad, is it?’ said Lloyd. ‘Bernard Bailey pushed the boat out to the end.’

He was opening drawers and cupboards. ‘Drinks,’ he said. ‘Do you fancy one?’

She smiled, thinking he was joking. ‘Is this the suite Rachel and Curtis Law had?’ she asked. ‘Do you think you’re going to find something?’

‘Nope.’ He took out a bottle of fruit juice. ‘Theirs was the one across the way, I think. But they’re all pretty much the same. Except this one looks out on to the road,’ He went to the old-fashioned sash window, and opened it. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Fill your lungs with good clean diesel fumes.’

She went to the window, and looked out at the bright summer street, and did indeed breathe in the heat-intensified smell of the city. She loved it. It made her feel as safe as that awful farm made her feel unprotected. She still didn’t understand why they were here, though. Not so that she could smell the city.

She turned to see Lloyd finish off the bottle of fruit juice. ‘You are going to pay for that?’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you think there was some hanky-panky with the suites, or what?’ she asked.

‘Nope,’ he said again. ‘I expect there was a fair bit of hanky-panky
in
the suites, but no – I don’t think Curtis Law and Rachel Bailey had clones or anything.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Judy. ‘ But if this isn’t their suite, why are we here?’

He smiled. ‘Because it’s our suite,’ he said, and picked up the phone. ‘Ah, good. Yes, please. Thank you.’ He hung up.

Judy wasn’t sure how that constituted a conversation, but she let it pass. ‘You’ve booked us in?’

‘Yep.’

She smiled. ‘Why, Chief Inspector Lloyd! Is this sexual harassment?’

‘Well, I do hope to fit in a little harassment of a sexual nature later on,’ he said, ‘but first we have a dinner date.’

Judy looked at him, and herself. They had been travelling for some considerable time in a heatwave, and she could imagine the dining room in this place. ‘ We’re not exactly dressed for dinner,’ she said,

‘No matter. It’s very informal. It’s at your parents’ house.’

There was a knock at the door, and a youth brought in a bottle of champagne and two glasses, which he set down on the table, a red rose which he handed to Judy, and a small bag, which he handed to Lloyd. He got a very handsome tip, by the look on his face as he left.

‘And I have taken thought for the morrow,’ Lloyd said. ‘The usual toiletries, and with advice from your mama, I have packed one pr knicks, one bra, one pr tights, flesh-coloured, and she said that any summer outfit that you usually wore to work would do, providing I knew which shoes went with it, and I think I’ve done it right, please don’t tell me if I haven’t.’

Judy felt tears coming as they were doing with embarrassing ease at the moment, and briskly sent them packing. She kissed him. ‘You’re lovely,’ she said.

‘I know.’ He put the champagne in the fridge. ‘For later,’ he said. And there is no hidden agenda. I don’t mean you to tell your parents anything at all about you-know-what. It just seemed to me that if we were here, it would be a pity not to see them. Linda’s going to be there, if she can. I said we’d be there about seven.’

And they showered, and put on their crumpled clothes, and ordered a cab. A black cab, for fear of offending the hall porter. While they were waiting, Lloyd began to look very pale and seedy, so she felt his forehead. Then she rang reception for aspirin, her parents to say that they wouldn’t be coming after all, and the hall porter to tell him to cancel his flashing beacon. Half an hour after that, she put Lloyd to bed and rang reception and asked if the hotel ran to medical help. By the time the doctor came, Lloyd had every blanket in the room on him, he was shivering and delirious, and she was panicking.