A Ghost at the Door (22 page)

He soon found out he was right. Wrong conclusions were piling up so high he’d need a rope and oxygen to climb over them.

‘OK, Harry, let’s go over your story one more time, shall we?’ Edwards said as a little later they gathered once again in the interview room, van Buren in attendance. He opened
a blue case file in front of him and made a point of studying it, even though he knew precisely what it said. He had to make the suspect believe he knew the answers. He looked up with grey,
enquiring eyes that were red at the rims with doubt. ‘Let’s start with this, shall we? The victim’s DNA all over your clothes.’ He threw an evidence bag onto the table
between them. It was Harry’s shirt. ‘Why don’t we have a go at explaining that?’

‘She was just saying goodbye.’

‘You weren’t shaking her hand, that’s for certain. Forensics reckon it was more of a clinch, a close encounter of the old-fashioned kind. You make a habit of kissing police
inspectors, do you?’

‘In your case I’ll make an exception.’

‘Detective
Chief
Inspector,’ Edwards reminded him pointedly, as though it might give him some advantage. ‘You spent some time in her room. The hotel receptionist
remembers you going up there and then leaving, roughly an hour later. He was very sure it was you.’

‘Give Pablo my best when you next see him.’

‘You getting your leg over, were you?’

‘Chief Inspector,’ van Buren interrupted, ‘you must have pathology reports by now. Is there any evidence that Inspector Hope and my client had engaged in any form of
sex?’

Edwards sucked his teeth. ‘Not that we can confirm. Yet.’

‘And do you have any evidence that my client or anyone else in a plaster cast and sling was at the scene where the inspector died?’

The DCI stopped sucking his teeth and instead chewed his cheek. ‘We’re still pursuing our enquiries. There was a lot of people in the park that afternoon.’

‘But presumably you’ve established the time of death.’

‘There, or thereabouts. The path-lab people are still working on that.’

‘What? Still?’

‘There are some unusual circumstances surrounding this death that we’re trying to get to the bottom of.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ the solicitor said, sensing a weakness. ‘You can establish no motive for my client being involved in the death. And you can’t even show he was
at the scene and so establish he had opportunity.’

‘We’ve got a hell of a lot of circumstantial and even more questions that need answering.’

‘But it’s up to you to answer the questions. You can’t keep my client on the grounds that he was having a cup of tea half a mile away.’

‘A mug. It was a mug of tea.’

Suddenly van Buren understood. Edwards was flapping like a torn sail. ‘Chief Inspector, can you confirm the cause of death?’

There was a pause. His face was frozen, no more chewing. He glanced sideways at his sergeant, then looked slowly back at the solicitor, trying to muster every ounce of authority that
twenty-eight years in the police service had given him. ‘I can tell you that she didn’t die of natural causes.’

‘Come on, you can do better than that. Was she murdered?’

‘Our tests aren’t finished.’

‘You don’t know? Then you can’t even be sure that a crime’s been committed.’

The DCI flushed in discomfort. ‘The initial autopsy suggested that Inspector Hope died from snake poison.’

Van Buren threw his hands up in disbelief. ‘Snake poison?’ he said, every syllable soaked in ridicule. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘A cobra,’ the policeman replied doggedly.

The absurdity of the statement stunned them all into silence.

‘That’s why we’re still doing tests,’ Edwards eventually said. ‘And, until they’re done, your client is going nowhere.’ He glanced across at Harry for
the first time in a while, his eyes fixed and determined, yet flecked with discomfort.

‘You said there were dragons out there, Hughie,’ Harry said. ‘You didn’t mention anything about bloody snakes.’

It was the first mutterings of Saturday evening, a full thirty hours after Harry had been arrested. In a few more hours the police either had to ask a magistrate for more time
and give him good reason, or let their prisoner go. This way, by releasing him early, they could drag Harry back in and still get a few more hours at him before any magistrate started getting
sticky. Keys jangled, the lock moved back with a dull thud and the cell door swung open. Edwards was standing in the doorway, the custody sergeant at his shoulder.

‘You’re out of here, Harry.’

Harry rubbed his eyes; they were sore from staring at walls. ‘I’m free to fly?’ he asked.

‘Police bail,’ Edwards said. ‘We’re going to want you back in. A few more questions,’he added with emphasis. He didn’t appear happy with the situation.

‘Hughie?’ Harry’s voice was loaded with exasperation, leaning on their past acquaintance.

The DCI glanced over his shoulder and the custody sergeant clanked his keys and withdrew, leaving them alone.

‘We believe she was probably murdered,’ the policeman said, ‘and you’re the closest thing I’ve got to a suspect.’

‘You know me, you can’t think I did it.’

‘No one else in my book right now. And it’s because I know you that I’ve got to do this by the bloody book.’ The DCI came and sat his large frame beside Harry. His body
language said he was tired. The plastic mattress didn’t even flinch. ‘We cell-traced your phone, Harry. Now I’m not telling you anything your solicitor won’t find out inside
five minutes. But your phone says you were never in the park. Says you were checking the cricket scores at the time the inspector died.’

‘Second day of a test match, what the hell do you expect a man to be doing?’

‘That’s not proof,’ the policeman snapped. ‘Only shows what your phone was doing, and we don’t have any current plans to press charges against your sodding
phone.’ Then he heaved a sigh, seemed to relent, just a little. ‘But.’

‘That sounds like a big bloody “but”, Hughie.’

‘The waitress is Polish, accent you can slice with a spade. She was busy, run off her feet. Distracted. Says she can’t remember anyone in a sling.’ He sniffed. ‘That
doesn’t mean a damned thing, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘I did warn you, Harry!’ The policeman’s mood had swung once again, his patience had disappeared and he levered himself wearily back to his feet. ‘I told you there were
dragons out there but you had to go and poke a stick in its eye, didn’t you? Always were an awkward Welsh sod.’

‘Half-Welsh. An awkward half-Welsh sod.’

Edwards shook his head. ‘Puts us both in a difficult position.’

‘You know something, Hughie? From this side of the bars it hasn’t looked like that.’

‘I’m that close to making superintendent,’ Edwards said, holding up a thumb and forefinger with barely room for a cigarette paper between them. ‘Then I can finish my
thirty years and bog off with a pension. But now this. I should never have talked to you about Susannah Ranelagh.’

‘She’s connected, I know she is,’ Harry insisted, growing irritated with a man he realized he could no longer consider his friend.

‘You’ll need a better alibi than that.’

‘I don’t need any sort of alibi! I didn’t kill Delicious, for Christ’s sake. She was a friend. You’re screwing with me, Hughie.’

‘You want a complaint form?’

‘No. But for old times’ sake maybe a favour.’

‘It was doing you a bloody favour what got us started on all this in the first place, remember?’

‘Look, I’ve got a photograph of Susannah Ranelagh. She’s with my father and some others. I can’t prove it’s connected to anything, but there’s a large number
of people who knew Miss Ranelagh and who somehow ended up dead. Now Delicious. It’s an old photo, taken fifty years ago, and there are two people in it I can’t identify. I don’t
know, there might be something in it and I was wondering, with your facial-recognition software, could you—’

‘Not a bloody chance.’

‘Come on, Hughie, don’t disappear up your own arse.’

‘Listen. The software requires high-resolution images, something like sixty pixels between the eyes. Your image is fifty years old, you say. Waste of time. Bit like trying to read my own
bloody handwriting.’

Harry’s head fell in disappointment. He knew the policeman’s handwriting. It resembled iron railings hit by a car.

‘So you can go and play with the fairies,’ the policeman said, turning towards the door. ‘For the moment.’

Harry suspected it was going to be tempestuous, an evening that both of them would prefer had never happened. When his key turned in the lock it felt stiff, reluctant to let him
in. He found Jemma in a T-shirt and shorts. She had turned the apartment into a laundry: everywhere there were freshly washed sheets, pillowcases, duvet covers, but most of all underwear. It seemed
as though every item she owned was being set out to dry, spreading from the bathroom across the rest of the apartment, where it sat like a fall of fresh snow down the back and on the seat of every
available chair. When he walked in she stood near an open window testing a pair of knickers, holding them to her cheek to see if they were dry. She looked up but it was almost as though it had been
seconds rather than three days since they’d last seen each other.

‘They made me feel dirty,’ she said slowly.

‘Who?’

‘Your friends. The police.’

A silence.

‘I tried to call,’ he said.

‘I know. My phone was off.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to speak to you.’

He entered the apartment cautiously, uncertain of what was waiting for him. ‘I got myself arrested. They thought I’d murdered someone.’ He tried to make light of it.

‘Another good reason for turning my phone off.’

Battle lines were being drawn.

‘They made me feel violated, Harry. My home, ransacked by the bloody police. They went through everything. Bathroom, bedroom, my underwear drawer. Everything that was private. To me. They
even know what brand of tampon I use. Thanks for that.’

‘It was a mistake,’ he protested. ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Who?’

‘What?’

‘Who were you supposed to have murdered?’

Another silence before, ‘Delicious. Delicious Hope. The Bermudan—’

‘Yes. I remember.’ The knickers she was holding were now crumpled into a tight ball inside her fist. ‘So she was in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘That I didn’t know. Perhaps because you didn’t tell me, Harry. Like you forgot to tell me about your son, Ruari.’

‘You’re reading too much into it.’

‘You and her? I wonder.’

‘I had a cup of tea with her. That’s all.’

‘And now she’s dead.’

Christ, she was as suspicious as the police. It was still almost eighty outside; the air inside was stifling.

‘There was nothing between us, Jem.’

‘And yet.’

More silence. Their eyes tangled, told of pain, sadness, mixed with wisps of suspicion.

She bit her lip, took a deep breath, her T-shirt heaved as she came to the main and most difficult point. ‘I want this to stop, Harry.’

‘What exactly?’

‘What you’re doing. With your father. It’s got completely out of hand; it isn’t reasonable any more. You’re pushing me away.’

‘I love you, Jem.’

‘But there are other things that are even more important to you than love.’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Then give this up.’

‘I can’t.’

Her bottom lip was trembling now, no matter how hard she bit on it. ‘I know you can’t. But I had to try.’ There was an air of finality about her words that made him feel
suddenly scared.

‘He’s my father, Jem. I can’t just forget him.’

‘You managed to do that perfectly well for twenty-odd years.’

They were still standing feet apart, where they had started, on opposite sides of the apartment, like gunslingers. He was covered in beads of sweat, and so was she, or were they tears?

‘There are too many questions,’ he said. ‘There’s something wrong about it all. My father. Susannah Ranelagh. Now Delicious. Somehow I feel like it’s all my
fault.’

‘Don’t give me this childhood guilt crap. It’s not your fault. And it’s certainly not and in no way ever been bloody mine!’ She flinched in pain, her fingers
flexed, her underwear fluttered to the floor like a dead bird falling from the sky.

‘Nothing has been your fault, Jem.’

He took a step forward but she recoiled, in guilt. It had been only a couple of hours since she’d showered off the last traces of Steve Kaminski.

‘Jem, I want to spend the rest of our lives together, you and me. But we’re all prisoners of our pasts, no one starts with a clean sheet. You understand that, don’t
you?’

‘And how!’ she whispered.

‘I have to find some way of breaking away from that, from my father. I need time. Give me a little time. Please, Jem, that’s all I ask.’

She turned away, looking blindly out of the window, trying to hide the turmoil inside. When she turned back, her face was a picture of misery. ‘Don’t you want to know where
I’ve been these last couple of days?’