Rotten Apples (20 page)

Deciding that she could hardly be committing an offence by paying in cash since it was up to him to account for everything he earned and pay the tax on it, Willow agreed. Then she suddenly remembered the minister's watch and his shiftiness, and added his name to the list Brian Gaskarth accepted it without a murmur.

Willow thanked him again, cut the connection, rang the temporary tax office and asked for Cara Saks.

‘Cara, it's Willow here. I'm not sure if I'm going to be up to getting to Croydon for the funeral on Thursday. Could you give me the Scoffers'address so that I can send some flowers?'

‘Of course,' said Cara at once, making Willow fear for her future. The mixture of naivety, indiscretion and fear seemed to make her a most unsuitable candidate for senior management, even though they all made her an appealing human being in an office inhabited by the likes of Jason Tillter and Len Scoffer. Cara dictated the address.

‘Thanks,' said Willow. ‘How's it going with the reconstruction of the files?'

‘Not too badly. And we have had some luck. A whole heap of files has just been sent over by the police. Some of them are fairly hard to read because they got quite wet, but they're not bad enough to go to the conservators. We're working on them now. And the conservation people are… Oh, here's Kate. I'd better go.'

‘Sure. Good luck. I'll see you in due course.'

Willow rang Directory Enquiries and got the telephone number for Len Scoffer's house without difficulty. When she dialled it, she was answered by a quiet female voice.

‘I wondered if I could speak to Mrs Scoffer? I worked with her husband. My name's Willow King.'

‘I'll see. Please wait.'

‘How dare you?' said an angry voice a moment later. Willow held the receiver a little further from her ear.

‘Is that Mrs Scoffer?' she asked, trying to make herself sound timid. She was surprised that Len should have told his wife anything about her.

‘How dare you ring me?' she said before Willow could even begin to offer condolences. ‘If it hadn't been for you, he'd never have been there at that time of night'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Well, you ought to. If you hadn't been poking about, causing trouble, stirring up his staff against him, ransacking his office after he'd left the building, he'd never have had to make sure you weren't alone in it again. He'd have been home long before the fire even started. It's your fault.'

‘But I wasn't stirring anybody up,' said Willow, shaken out of her own anger. ‘And I never went near his office when he wasn't there.'

‘If it hadn't been for you he wouldn't have died. You got out all right Oh, yes, I read all about that You're fine. But Len's dead. I hope you remember that for the rest of your life.'

The protests did not ring altogether true, but Willow told herself that lots of people found it hard to express strong emotion convincingly, and that Mrs Scoffer might well be parroting something she had read or heard because she could not find words of her own.

‘It's you who should have burned to death,' she went on very quietly just before she rang off, and that sounded much more convincing.

Sickened by the injustice of the accusations, Willow sat back in her chair as she painfully put down the telephone receiver. She found herself thinking up excuses for Mrs Scoffer, who, after all, knew her only through Len's exaggerated diatribes, but no rationalisation could remove the nausea she felt. Memories of the fire welled up in her mind and it seemed vile that anyone, however unhappy, could wish her dead in it. She felt like ringing Mrs Scoffer again to describe just what it had been like and how much responsibility Len had borne for her presence in the building in the first place. But she knew it would not help. And whatever Len might have done, he had not deserved his death.

Much later in the evening, when Willow recovered some of her equilibrium, she went into the pristine kitchen and found the gazpacho and cold veal that Mrs Rusham had left for her. The sauce that accompanied the veal was a kind of mayonnaise, flavoured with capers and the wine and herbs she had smelled in the kitchen that morning, and it was delicious. Even so, she could not eat much of it and eventually put the remains in the bin and returned to the drawing room, switching on the television.

For nearly an hour she pretended to be absorbed in a documentary about the health service, and then watched the news, hoping that there might be something about the police investigation of Scoffer's death. There was not, but she was able to watch a short clip of George Profett speaking on human rights abuses during a debate that had taken place in the House of Commons that afternoon. He came over quite well, she thought, and looked good, too: earnest and well-meaning and thoroughly intelligent.

‘Perhaps he really is honest,' she said aloud.

The thought of lying sleepless in bed throughout another long sultry night filled her with horror, and so she went to the hospital, where she sat at Tom's side until after one o'clock.

The next morning's post brought Willow a collection of bills and more letters of sympathy over Tom's condition and her own experiences in the fire. There was nothing from the private detective, which disappointed her until she remembered that he had had only about thirteen of the twenty-four hours he had said he would need, most of them at dead of night.

Reading the letters, she drank the superb coffee Mrs Rusham had made and ate a little of the grilled bacon. They had nothing to say to each other that could be safely said, and so they kept their own counsel.

As soon as she had finished breakfast, Willow retreated into her lettuce-green writing room to work. She tried to ring Serena Fydgett but was told that she was not in chambers.

‘Are you expecting her?' Willow asked the clerk.

‘Not today,' he said politely enough.

‘I'm anxious to get in touch with her. She came to see me yesterday and there's more we have to discuss. I never asked her for her home telephone number and now I find it's exdirectory.'

‘I…' began the clerk, but Willow hurried on.

‘I'm not asking you to give it to me, but I'd be grateful if you would ring her and tell her that I need to speak to her. I shall be on this number for the rest of the day.' When the clerk agreed to do as she asked, she dictated her number and said goodbye.

Brian Gaskarth telephoned soon after that and asked when it would be convenient for him to bring round his report. Delighted with his quickness, Willow invited him to come straight away and waited in some curiosity to see what he would be like.

When he came he was a surprise—tall and grey-haired, looking more like an experienced salesman than anything else. As he opened his Samsonite briefcase, Willow almost expected him to get out a bunch of glossy brochures and explain to her how he could get her huge discounts on a fitted kitchen or some double-glazing. Instead he took out a transparent plastic folder, from which he offered her several sheets of paper, neatly typed.

Glancing through them as quickly as she could, Willow discovered that he had provided her with precise details of the income, debts and credit references of Kate Moughette, Jason Tillter, Len Scoffer, and the minister, together with opinions about their honesty from their respective banks.

‘That's remarkably impressive,' she said, glad of the information but uncomfortable, too. She wondered how many people had the same kind of data about her and almost laughed at the naivety that had once led her to believe that she could keep her identity as Cressida Woodruffe secret from all those who had known her as Willow King.

‘How did you get it all so quickly?'

Gaskarth shrugged and then murmured something indistinct about fax machines, modems and new technology, adding more clearly: ‘You'll find details of their standing orders, direct debits, and major spends attached to the covering sheets.' He seemed quite unaware of the turmoil of feelings he had aroused in his newest client.

‘Then I think that's it then, for the moment Perhaps I can call on you if I need anything else?'

‘Delighted. Here's my account.'

The bill seemed surprisingly modest. Remembering that he wanted cash, Willow frowned.

‘Is there something wrong?'

‘No. It's just that you've been so astonishingly quick that I haven't got any cash out of the bank yet. I know it's just what we agreed, but I haven't got anything like enough on me. Is a cheque any good to you, or would you rather come with me to the bank while I get cash?'

Mr Gaskarth looked around the room, as though he were pricing the furniture and paintings, and then grinned. ‘I'll take a cheque from you, Mrs Worth.'

‘Great,' said Willow and wrote one out, meticulously noting all the relevant details on the counterfoil and deducting the sum from her running total.

When he had gone, she studied the reports more carefully, trying to find any evidence of the corruption Len Scoffer had suspected. Both Kate and Jason received money from sources other than their salary, but, reading further down the reports, Willow discovered that the odd sums were payments by wholly reputable magazines and newspapers for published articles.

Kate's greatest expenditure after the mortgage on her Pimlico flat was her monthly Access account. Willow was amused to see that her guess about Kate's dry-cleaning bills had been right. They were huge in comparison with her total expenditure. On the other hand she did not spend anything in any of the well known clothes shops, which did seem surprising.

Willow looked at the list of cheque payees more closely, identifying each one with ease except for a company called Frohberg, which recurred nearly every other month. Looking them up in the telephone directory, Willow saw that they supplied ‘couture fabrics'and began to understand.

If her clothes were made for her, it was not surprising that they were so well fitted. On the other hand, it was still surprising that she had quite so many custom-made suits.

Her direct debits were unexciting, as were Jason's. But there were regular payments in two of the other lists that gave Willow a shock. Len Scoffer transferred sixty pounds into his wife's account on the second of every month, presumably for housekeeping. Willow wondered how much Mrs Scoffer had had to buy with that. If it were only food for the two of them, then it might be enough, but if she had no other income and was expected to buy her clothes or pay the household bills, it would be outrageously little in comparison with her husband's earnings.

Turning back to the list of regular payments that had been made from Scoffer's account over the past year, Willow could see none to the telephone, electricity or gas companies, although there were regular amounts to his local council, presumably for the council tax, and the water company.

Of all the targets of her investigation, Scoffer saved the most. Jason Tillter made no investments at all and had a large overdraft. Kate paid one hundred pounds a month into an investment trust but otherwise spent everything she earned. Neither Scoffer nor Jason made any cheque payments to a charity, although Kate subscribed small amounts to both Mind and Crisis, and the minister made a large, regular donation to Amnesty International.

But the most interesting item in the entire bundle of paper was a monthly standing order for three hundred pounds paid by the minister to a Miss Andrea Salderton. Willow read through everything the detective had given her before ringing his office.

‘Miss Andrea Salderton?' he said as soon as Willow had given him her name. ‘Interesting, isn't it?'

‘Yes, but if you realised that, why didn't you look into it?'

‘No pay, no look,' said the detective, laughing. ‘Besides, how was I to know you'd find it as tantalising as I do? You didn't give me any idea what it was you were looking for.'

‘Okay,' said Willow, irritated by his jocularity but needing his skills and contacts. ‘I want to know who she is, where she lives, what she does for a living, why he pays her.' She stopped talking, suddenly aware of yet another reason why the minister might have wanted Scoffer's tactics investigated. ‘And which her local tax office is.'

‘Can do. Health records of any interest?'

‘No, I don't think so. Well, yes, actually they might help. And anything else you can turn up quickly.'

‘I'll see what I can do. If it looks as though it's getting very expensive, I'll let you know. Goodbye, Mrs Worth.'

Putting down the telephone, Willow tried to remember how she had introduced herself. It was most unlikely to have been as ‘Mrs Thomas Worth'; she never called herself that. Presumably Gaskarth had run a check on her too. It was an unpleasant thought and she had a moment's sympathy for Miss Andrea Salderton, whoever she might be.

The telephone rang again. Willow picked it up to discover Serena Fydgett on the other end.

‘I thought it was urgent that we speak,' she said irritably. ‘I've been obediently trying to ring you for the past half-hour but you've been constantly engaged.'

‘Sony. The hospital rang me. I had to talk to them,' said Willow, lying in an attempt to placate the other woman, who was clearly furious about something. ‘I wanted to ask whether I could come and talk to you today—and perhaps to your nephew as well, if he's still with you?'

‘Why?' The single word emerged from the telephone like an angry bark.

‘It's just that I'm trying to sort out my own thoughts on who might have started the fire, and I'd like to check one or two things out with you both.'

‘You're beginning to sound like the police, Willow.'

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. You must know I don't think you had anything to do with the arson. It's just that I need to get my mind clear about what the police are up to and why. They won't tell me, despite the fact that I'm involved. If I could talk to Robert about his interrogation, that would help. I…' Willow made herself sound pathetic. ‘I need to know what's going on. That's why I was in a bit of a panic when I spoke to your clerk and told him how urgent it was that we speak.'