Rattling the Bones (30 page)

I remembered I was house-hunting and thanked her.

I could not be sure the woman at the café might not come to the window and watch which way I went, so I took myself off briskly in the opposite direction to Lottie’s place, made a tour of the block and came back to approach the house from the other direction.

I tried to look as normal as possible, as if I had every right to enter the premises. I ignored the front door and walked down the side of the house towards the detached garage at the end of the drive. I saw as I approached it that it was padlocked.

Surely I wasn’t to be foiled by something as basic as a padlock? I prowled round the garage’s exterior walls. There was a small dusty window in one side overlooking the neglected garden. Beneath it in an untidy pile was a job lot of gardener’s hardware: a rusty lawn roller, stacks of empty plant pots, plastic sacks which had contained compost and now seemed to contain rubbish and propped against it all an ancient wooden sawhorse. You know the sort of thing: it’s constructed from a pair of X-shaped ends with a bar between them. I dragged it out, trying not to pepper my hands with splinters, and gave it an experimental shake. It seemed solid enough to support my weight. I’m not that big. I hauled aside a couple of the rubbish sacks to make more room beneath the window. It was only a matter of time before someone looked out of a neighbour’s window and spotted me so I had to act fast. If challenged I’d try and get away with telling anyone interested that I was being paid to clear out the garden. I scrambled cautiously up onto the sawhorse. It groaned in protest and one of the X joints gave an ominous little crack.

The ground beneath it was soft and the horse shifted without warning so that I wobbled dangerously and grabbed at the windowsill. I didn’t want to spend any more time up here than I had to. My precarious perch might give way at any minute. I pressed my face against the cobweb-festooned glass panes. At first I couldn’t make out anything in the gloom inside the garage. And then my eyes adjusted to the poor light, I caught a gleam of polished metal and there it was: a lovingly maintained powerful motorcycle.

It was what I had hoped to see, the last little thing which would tell me I was absolutely on the right track now.

‘Well, well, Fran,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Scouting round prior to doing a bit of burglary? Allow me to help you down.’

It was Adam Ferrier.

Chapter Sixteen

I felt a fool and I felt angry. What was worse, I was momentarily stumped. I had very little time to concoct a plausible explanation. But it wouldn’t wash, whatever I said. He knew exactly what I had been looking for - and exactly what I’d seen.

As I jumped down the sawhorse toppled away beneath me and I lurched forward to land inelegantly in his arms. He took hold of my elbow in a very professional policeman’s hold, pushing the shoulder joint upward so that it was almost impossible to twist away. I wondered where he’d learned it or maybe experienced it.

‘We’ll go into the kitchen,’ he said, ‘and wait there for Lottie to come back.’

He pushed me towards the back door and, still keeping a tight grip on my elbow, fished a bunch of house keys from his pocket.

‘Oh,’ I gasped, ‘so you’ve got the keys to Lottie’s house, too? You’re a great one for collecting keys, aren’t you?’

‘Shut up!’ he said in a cold little voice and pushed me through the opened door.

It was at that moment I felt the first small spurt of fear pushing aside all the other emotions I’d experienced when he’d discovered me teetering on that sawhorse. Now I realised I wasn’t just in his power alone but at the mercy of them both. They had worked together in a neat little conspiracy. They wouldn’t allow me to let the world know about it. If Adam had sounded angry I would have worried less; but that cold little voice reminded me I was dealing with a killer.

My ever-active imagination raced ahead. How would they do it? As they dealt with Duane, with a hypodermic? I saw my body being found in some deserted spot. How would I be identified? Would they leave Ganesh’s mobile phone on me? Would my photo appear on television crime prevention programmes? Would the woman at the corner café remember me as the girl who never came back for the croissants?

‘Take a seat,’ invited Adam with a sarcastic grimace. ‘Take off your wig and make yourself at home, why don’t you?’

I sat down at the kitchen table. The room smelled of fresh paint. Lottie had made a start but hadn’t got very far. What looked like an experimental few brush strokes decorated the surround of the door frame. Perhaps she’d abandoned the work because she hadn’t liked the colour, after all. I can’t say duck-egg blue is my favourite shade.

Adam seated himself near me, where he could cover any attempt I might make at escape either through the back door or into the hall towards the front door.

‘Why aren’t you doing something financial in the city?’ I asked resentfully. ‘What are you doing here this morning?’

I pulled off the wig, not because he had suggested it but because it made my scalp sweaty and scratchy. Glad to be free of it, I tossed it on the table as nonchalantly as possible and it lay there looking like some sort of road kill.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘What am
I
doing here? Oughtn’t I to be asking you that?’

I tried to brazen it through. Fat chance of success, I knew, but I had to try. It’s the actor in me. ‘I came to see Lottie. She’s not here. I took a look round the garden. It was just curiosity.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Ferrier unpleasantly.

Well, it didn’t matter if he believed my explanation or not. Once he knew I’d seen the motorbike,
how
I’d come to see it was immaterial. He wasn’t a fool, though. He knew I hadn’t taken a sudden interest in gardening.

His mind was running on, too.

‘What tipped you off?’ he asked with a frown.

I pointed at the wall behind him but he didn’t turn his head. ‘She took the family photographs down,’ I said. ‘She should have left them there. I noticed them when I first came into this kitchen and talked about her grandmother. She realised afterwards that I might remember enough about that wedding photo of her grandmother to spot a likeness to Edna, the next time I saw Edna. They were sisters, weren’t they, Lilian and Edna, I mean?’

‘Had you,’ he asked, without answering my question, ‘spotted a likeness?’

‘No, not then. She needn’t have worried. I probably wouldn’t even have looked at them again. But when she took them down it got me wondering. I didn’t buy into the story of hanging a memorial photograph of old Duane up there. That’s his motorbike, isn’t it, out there in the garage all nicely locked away from prying eyes? His pride and joy, I bet.’

This time he nodded. ‘Yes, the poor sap fancied himself as a ton-up boy in black leathers. He used to take it out at weekends and burn rubber down to Brighton or Bournemouth or some such seaside spot. Sometimes Lottie went with him pillion but she wasn’t keen on travelling like that.’

‘But she did ride it herself from time to time?’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘As you’ve been riding it since Duane hung up his leathers for the last time, thanks to you.’

He still said nothing.

‘I’m guessing you were riding it when Edna was nearly knocked down and Lottie was riding the day I was the target. Only it didn’t quite work either time, did it? Killing Duane was the easy part. Getting rid of Edna and me has proved a bit harder, hasn’t it?’

Adam smiled then and I rather wished he hadn’t. ‘Practice makes perfect,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it right next time - which will be fairly soon.’

My only hope, as I could see it at the moment, was that he wanted to wait for Lottie to come back and she might have a different idea. His unwillingness to act without her told me that she made the decisions. One of them had been that they should kill her boyfriend and business partner. My blood seemed to stop circulating for a moment. I think I must have looked my horror because Adam smiled again. He probably thought I was contemplating my own death. But I was thinking of Duane and of Lottie’s treachery. It’s happened before that love’s died and, when it hasn’t been easy for one party to disentangle him or herself, then murder has suggested itself as a solution. The lurid details make a double feature in the tabloid press. Usually it’s a shotgun blast in a lonely farmhouse turned luxury home. This time it had been a syringe in the arm in Susie Duke’s office.

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘Lottie and Duane never really had that much in common, other than a desire to set up this agency.’

‘You met him,’ Adam said with a dismissive shrug.

‘Whereas you were an old flame who had come back into her life.You are doing well and living in Docklands and your elderly infirm grandfather is worth a few millions. Suddenly, Duane was inconvenient. Even more inconveniently, he was a
good
detective. I mean he wasn’t just efficient; he was honourable, too.’

‘He was a prat,’ said Adam.

There are people who see having a conscience as a weakness and Adam was clearly one of them.

‘You had a bit of luck,’ I mused, ‘being there when Les came to tell Duane about me. Even luckier, Les managed to lose the Duke Agency’s keys at the same time. How did you know they were the keys to Susie’s office?’

‘Les,’ said Adam thoughtfully, ‘the bruiser with the personal hygiene problem? Yes, I saw the keys on the floor and was going to call after him, but then I saw the wally had tied a little tag on them reading “Duke”. No address or anything but they had to be the office keys. I suddenly saw that Fate was playing into my hands. It all seemed rather
meant
, you know. I just slipped them into my pocket. Duane was up at the bar and didn’t see.’

‘You and Lottie plotted together,’ I said dully. ‘Lottie phoned Susie Duke to arrange a set-up meeting to get her out of the office. You, meantime, persuaded Duane that a visit to the Duke Agency to confront me there or to quiz the owner might be a good idea. So he went trustingly with you to what, you knew, would be an empty office. Wasn’t he a bit surprised when you produced the keys?’

‘I didn’t,’ he said crossly. ‘Give me a bit of credit, will you?’

‘No, of course, you didn’t. Lottie had got there first and had been hanging about waiting for Susie to leave. She nipped up the stairs and opened up the door so that when you and Duane arrived, you could just walk in, as if the place was occupied and Susie sitting in there waiting for business. Am I right?’

He only gave that grimace which I could no longer call a smile. ‘You seem good at working things out. Perhaps you and Duane should have set up in business.’

There was a pause and I got in a dig of my own. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘you’ll never be able to trust her. Whatever Lottie’s motives, to betray Duane like that . . . That’s abnormal. They had been together for years. Not just boyfriend and girlfriend but business partners. They shared this house. They shared their lives. She just abandoned him, cut herself loose, and agreed to let him die. She doesn’t function like other people, Adam. You’ll always have to watch your back.’

‘Function like other people?’ he retorted mockingly. ‘That’s a bit rich coming from you. What would you know about normality?’

There was a distant rattle from the front door.

‘Ah,’ said Adam pleasantly, ‘here’s Lottie now.’

Footsteps echoed out in the hall as the front door slammed. The kitchen door opened and Lottie appeared red-faced, shiny with sweat, and panting from her run. She froze in the doorway with her eyes popping as they took in me and her jaw dropped.

‘What the hell is
she
doing here?’

As the words left her lips she suddenly swivelled to look back over her shoulder.

Lottie hadn’t returned from her run alone.

The person who had been standing in the hallway behind her moved forward. Lottie backed away into the kitchen as if mesmerised to allow the newcomer full view.

‘
Jessica!
’ Adam leapt to his feet and his chair toppled over backwards with a crash to the floor. ‘What the devil . . .’

‘I met Lottie at the door,’ Jessica Davis said, coming further into the room. ‘I was just about to ring her doorbell when she jogged up and so we came in together. Just as well, I fancy.’ She nodded at me. ‘Hullo, Fran.’

‘You know Fran?’ Adam’s voice rose to a squeak of incredulity.

‘Look,’ Lottie had rallied and now burst into a gabble of speech. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here. I met this woman at the door. She says she’s a friend of your grandfather’s and she wanted to talk to me, so I asked her in. I have no idea what she wants. I don’t know what Fran is doing here and what the hell you’ve been saying to her?’