Murder... Now and Then (20 page)

She knelt down beside him, suddenly aware of Victor's no longer being in the world. It was a frightening feeling.

Max put his arm round her. ‘You must feel dreadful … I'm sorry. I know how you felt about him, but I can't … I'm sorry,' he said again. ‘ It's a nightmare – the whole thing's a nightmare from start to finish.'

‘Why did you tell him I was here when you arrived yesterday evening?' she asked.

‘You needed an alibi,' he said simply. ‘I know what that feels like. So I said you were with me.'

Anna swallowed. ‘But … but how do you know I didn't kill him?' she asked.

‘You were very drunk,' he said. ‘You couldn't have told me all that without letting it slip that you'd done something awful.'

Oh, dear God. Told him all what?

Victor was dead. She had to keep reminding herself of that. And what she had done. She remembered that quite clearly, and had from the moment she had opened the door to a police uniform.

‘No one should have to go through what I went through.' He got shakily to his feet, and put his arms round her. ‘No one.' He made a noise, a cross between a sigh and a sob. ‘They don't give you time to mourn. Someone you're close to is just … just ripped away from you, and all they can do is ask where you were, and take your clothes away and call you a liar.' He closed his eyes. ‘I know what it's like,' he said. ‘If I can stop them doing it to you, I will.'

‘But … but you've no idea where I was. I could have been anywhere – how do you know they can't check up?'

‘I heard him, going on at you – you couldn't prove where you were, or you'd have told him. That's why I came out.'

‘Don't you want to know?' she asked still a little suspicious of such gallantry, and totally lacking his faith in the uselessness of the police. Lying got you into trouble.

‘None of my business,' he said. ‘I just wanted to get Finch off your back. So I told a lie. The rest was true, though,' he said with a weak smile. ‘You couldn't get enough of me. You wouldn't even answer the door.'

She frowned. ‘The door?'

‘Someone rang the bell. It was late – I thought it might be important, but you didn't want to know. You said we were more important. Then you passed out.' He smiled. ‘ I didn't fell terribly important.'

She had faint, faint memories of being in bed with him, of wanting him never to leave her, just like he said she had. But it was like another life, another person. She had never wanted any man. She had used them, made money out of them. She had grown very close to Victor, despite the way he was, but she had never wanted him. And she hadn't wanted Max any of the other times; she had just given him what he wanted. Last night had been different; she remembered that. She wasn't sure it was a good thing.

‘I'd better go into work,' she said. ‘I know he had a TV and a video for instance – I should have told Finch that, I suppose.'

Max shook his head. ‘ It wasn't a burglary,' he said.

‘No.' She sighed. ‘ Victor was … well … he had real enemies,' she said. ‘That scar he's got? He got jumped by some business rival, who slashed him with a razor—'

‘What?' said Max. ‘What sort of business was he in, for God's sake?'

‘Drugs. Big time – heroin, cocaine. Not now, of course. But then. It's how he got started.'

‘Nice,' said Max.

Drug dealing was possibly one of Victor's nicer traits, thought Anna, but then Max didn't know him. Hadn't known him. Victor was dead. She had to remember that.

‘Then why bother going in?' he said.

‘Because it'll look bad if I don't.'

He pulled her close to him. ‘Don't go yet,' he said. ‘Let's forget about all this for a while. Before they won't let us forget. We managed it last night, didn't we?'

She smiled. ‘Your hangover may be fake, but mine isn't,' she said. ‘And you're not exactly on top form yourself.'

‘I need you,' he said simply.

He had stayed with her when she needed him. Despite the way she felt, and against her better judgement, she went back to bed with Max. But she didn't forget about it. Her head still throbbed, which was more than the passion did; the earth certainly didn't move, whatever it had done last night. But Max was gentle and comforting as ever; she felt less lonely. And she felt something else that she couldn't put a name to.

She had never made love; she had had men, and they had had her, since before she had reached her teens. She had learned over the years with Victor how to make sex with her an experience that they wanted to repeat. But she had never made love until now, and they were still lying in one another's arms when the police came back. Once again, she entertained Sergeant Finch in her dressing-gown, but this time Max got dressed before he emerged from the bedroom.

‘I must ask you both to come to the police station to answer further questions concerning the death of Mr Victor Holyoak,' said Finch. ‘You are not under arrest, and you are not obliged to answer the questions which will be put to you, but what you do say may be given in evidence.' He looked at Max. ‘Are those the clothes you were wearing last night, Mr Scott?'

Max nodded, and glanced at Anna.

‘And you, Miss Worthing? Could I see the clothes you were wearing?'

Anna went into the bedroom, scooping up the pile of clothes that still lay by the side of the bed, and came out again, looking at Finch with loathing as she thrust them silently into his hands. Max had warned her.

He glanced at them, and handed them back to her. ‘Thank you,' he said. ‘ Could you get dressed now, please?'

Catherine sat in the car, where she had been waiting for Max to arrive. Zelda had arrived; she hadn't seen Catherine as she had become impatient waiting for the lift, and taken the stairs, as everyone else had done. Catherine wasn't going to go in until Max arrived.

It was much later that she realized that Max was probably already there; he would have taken a taxi to work. Anna Worthing hadn't arrived either, she noticed. But Catherine still hadn't gone up.

It wasn't really fear any more. It was a feeling of helplessness, of wanting just to sit here and never move again. But it was mid-morning; she couldn't stay here for ever. Max might be worried. She had to go up and face the music. She got out of the car, stiff and sore, and pressed the lift button, preparing herself for what was to come. She had been awake all night, the car not being the most comfortable place to sleep, even if she could have done. But she doubted that she would have slept wherever she had been. She had been trying to work out how to cope with this moment, and now that it had arrived, she still had no idea.

The lift wasn't going to come; she climbed the stairs, and pushed open the door with its oak-tree motif. She was faced with groups of people standing around; receptionists, police officers, members of staff. One of the girls on reception pointed over to her, and murmured something to a dark-haired woman who stood by the reception desk. The dark-haired woman advanced.

‘Mrs Scott?' she asked.

Catherine nodded. ‘Is … is Max here?' she asked the receptionist but she didn't answer.

‘Mrs Scott, I'm Detective Inspector Hill, ‘Stansfield CID. Could I have a word with you?'

‘Where's Max?' she asked again, but the inspector led her to the little rest room off reception, and closed the door.

‘Mrs Scott,' she said. ‘I'm afraid I have some bad news for you about your stepfather.'

Anna was with Victor, feeling secure, as she always did when he was there, and never did and never had all the rest of her life. The blinds shaded the bright January sun, and she left them drawn as they spoke.

‘I dealt with Bannister,' he said. ‘Some of the damage will be permanent, I assure you.'

Anna's eyes widened slightly at the chilling statement, but she didn't say anything. Victor wasn't the sort of man whose actions you queried.

She had seen a lot of him; it was his stepdaughter he really wanted to see, but she was at work all day, and she was getting home later and later. He hadn't found her in yet. And over the weeks, she had heard his story.

He had been in hospital, receiving outpatient treatment for a minor injury, and he had met Margaret who was recovering from a stroke which had left her in delicate health. Margaret had been widowed when Catherine was a toddler; she and Victor had married six months after that first meeting, when Catherine was thirteen. For eighteen months everything was wonderful. But then his wife had had a second, crippling stroke that had cut her down when she was just thirty-eight, and she had been left almost totally paralysed, with little or no hope of any improvement. After another eighteen months his step-daughter had run away from home, which had devastated her mother, and Victor had spent huge amounts of time and money trying to find her, to persuade her to go home. It amounted to an obsession, in Anna's opinion, but she didn't voice it. For one thing it wouldn't help, and for another, she knew better than to criticize Victor.

‘Now I want you to do something for me,' he said.

‘Anything.' She meant it; she was pleased that there was something she could do. She had never in her life felt so secure as she did now; whatever he'd done to Bannister, whatever he wanted her to do, was fine by her. She was always pleased to see Victor, even though his heavy schedule sometimes meant mid-morning visits, because he had never once, not from the awful moment he had met her, spoken to her as if she were any different from anyone else.

You got a lot of different attitudes; some men were scared of you, some were contemptuous – though what they had to be contemptuous about, she had never worked out – most were terribly aware of who called the tune. Victor wasn't like that; he spoke to her as an equal. It always made her feel good when Victor had been to see her.

‘I'm sending someone to you.'

Victor had never come for sex. He seemed to be staying true to his wife, though she would never be able to do anything for him again. Anna sometimes wondered, in her more cynical moments, if the marriage had been as idyllic as he remembered it, but it didn't really make much difference. He believed it had been, and he, she had begun to realize as the weeks went by, was as crippled by his obsessive love as his wife had been by the stroke. And his wife, more than anything in the world, wanted her daughter back, which was the one thing that he, with all his money and power, couldn't provide for her.

‘He'll arrive like an ordinary customer, but he won't want your services.'

Even better. Two customers who didn't want her services; she would be delighted if they were all like that.

‘He'll want this.' Victor took from the inside of his jacket a thick envelope. ‘Just give it to him,' he said. ‘ Keep him here for long enough to make it look good, then get rid of him. If he asks any questions, let me know. And don't answer them.'

She nodded, taking the envelope. Money. It had to be.

‘I've given him the same instructions about you,' said Victor. ‘So don't get curious.' He tapped the envelope. ‘And don't get greedy.'

‘I wouldn't steal any of it,' she said, stung.

He took out his wallet, pulling out notes. ‘That's to cover loss of earnings while he's here,' he said, putting them on the table.

She didn't know what she was getting into, but she didn't care. Drugs? Probably. Victor never spoke about how he made his money, but she was pretty sure that he was into drug-running in a big way. This person who would be visiting her was probably one of the ones who carried the stuff through customs in a variety of unpleasant ways that Anna preferred not to think about. ‘How will I know which is him?' she asked.

‘You know him,' said Victor. ‘I've told him what he has to do, and I don't want to be seen in his company again. So all his dealings with me will be through you from now on.'

He told her his name then, and her eyebrows went up. Ray Wilkes? Too true, he wouldn't want her services. He was as queer as a three-pound note. But he wasn't into drugs or anything like that, and he was far too fond of living to go swallowing packs of heroin that might burst in his stomach. So what was Victor paying him money for?

‘You weren't thinking of asking a question, were you?' said Victor.

She shook her head quickly. ‘Except …' she began.

He waited, his grey eyes resting on hers, warning her not to stick her nose in where it wasn't wanted. But she wasn't about to do that. ‘Is this a one-off?' she asked.

‘No. He'll be coming here often over the next few weeks. I'lI make sure you've got his money. And your out of pocket expenses.'

She smiled. ‘ Good,' she said. ‘That means you'll be coming here often, too.'

‘I don't know, Gerry. I think we should just keep trying. There's plenty of time.'

‘But they didn't give us much chance,' Geraldine said.

‘Maybe not. But if there
is
a chance, I think we should just keep trying.'

A possibility. That was what the consultant had said. A possibility that Charles could father a child. He had all the necessary attributes – just not quite enough of them to make it the near certainty that it usually was.

‘Charles,' she said. ‘Why don't we make enquiries? That won't commit us to anything—'

‘But we'd be … putting ourselves on their books.' Charles switched on the television as he spoke.

‘Oh, Charles! They're not going to turn up the next day with a baby!'

‘All the same.' He fiddled with the channels, nicking through until he found the local news, and sat down, facing the television, so that he was side-on to her.

‘Can't we just find out what it entails? Charles – there are hundreds of babies born every year whose mothers can't or – won't keep them! They shouldn't grow up in homes, not if there are other people who want babies!'