A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) (20 page)

“Sorry, Ian, what was that?”

“I was just completing your Buddhist education on karma in the context of the Rugby World Cup.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Tonight’s result will have consequences. All our actions have consequences. Everything we do affects somebody.”

“I get that.”

As I arrived back at my car, I saw I had a message on my phone. It was from Jim Fosse. It read:

I am going to start laying my new patio
next weekend

I called his number. There was no answer.

29

DAVID

A certain amount of stress can invigorate our minds to higher levels of creativity and productivity. The gurus call this
eustress
. Once we pass a tipping point, however, our ability to think with clarity erodes fast, and we descend into a crevasse of emotional burn-out where unreason, inertia and indolence lie in wait.

At work
the next day, concentration proved hard to come by.

I kept my office door closed and dealt with
administrative matters, all of which could have waited, and under ordinary circumstances would have done exactly that. But these were not ordinary circumstances.

At lunchtime I phoned Anna.

“Are you OK to talk?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“You frightened me half to death yesterday at the railway station. If you hadn’t called me, I was going to call you.”

I opened a window and lit a Marlboro. “I’m sorry, Anna. That wasn’t my intention. And, by the way, this crisis – or whatever the hell it is – has nothing to do with you and me.”

“
All right.” I could sense her relax a little. “So tell me, what
is
going on?”

“This man
I mentioned to you, Jim Fosse, he’s what’s going on. This year, I’ve bumped into him a few times, and all our meetings have been, well, weird to say the least. You remember that dinner party you and Max were invited to? Claire and I were also invited.” I flicked ash out of the window and tried to work out how to explain the situation to Anna without sounding completely mad.

“Go on.”

“Fosse is one of those people who is difficult to read.  You can’t tell whether he’s joking or not. He will say things which, if he’s not kidding, mean he’s a complete card-carrying psycho.”

“Like what, David?
” I could hear the anxiety in her voice again.

“He put a proposal to me. If I kill Monique for him, he’ll kill Claire for me.”

There was a shocked silence. Then Anna said, “He can’t be serious. This has to be a bad taste prank.”

“That
was my first reaction. But while he was out of the country on business recently, Monique disappeared. His call yesterday was to thank me for ridding him of his troublesome spouse.”

“Oh, my God. Have you said anything to Claire?”

“No.”

“Why not, David?”

“Because for one thing, I don’t know if Monique
has
disappeared. He may just be screwing with me. Tonight I’m meeting an old friend who’s in the police to see if he can tell me anything about Monique. According to Fosse, the police have had him in for questioning already, so I can at least find out whether that’s true.”

“Have you called Fosse back?”

“He’s not answering his phone.” I wondered how to bring up the next point without panicking Anna. “You said that Max works with Monique Fosse?”

“Yes. They’re at the same consulting firm. Do you want me to ask Max whether she’s been at work lately?”

“No.” My reply was a little too vehement. “Anna, there is no easy way to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. The woman I saw Max meeting at the hotel? It was Monique.”

There was a pause.
“Are you sure?” She sounded doubtful.

“I’m sure.”

“Because, you see … Oh, God.”

“What?”

“Only last week I saw Max with a young woman in his car. A very young woman. A
girl
, really. And I am not the only one who has seen him. It was not Monique Fosse. I know because I’ve met her. This girl looked like a student. Maybe about Katie’s age.” I heard Anna swallow hard.

Max could well have been seeing two women. I wouldn’t have put it past the slim
y git. That would feed his over-inflated ego. A married woman and a student simultaneously? I could see the smug leer now. But I couldn’t very well say that to Anna.

“It’s Monique I’m more concerned about now
, Anna. If she has vanished, it could spell trouble for Max. And, sweetheart, it could spell trouble for you too.”

“Yes,
I can see that. So what happens next?”

“Let me find out whether Jim Fosse is feeding me a cock-and-bull story. In the meantime, I suggest you say nothing to Max.
Or indeed, to anyone. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything, OK?”

“OK.”

“And we still have that lunch on Friday, right?”

“Right.”

“I have to go, Anna. I’ll be in touch soon.”

“All right, David. I love you.”

I cut the line before I realised what she had said.

Chief Superintendent Bill Munks of the South Yorkshire Police was not a man who suffered fools gladly. At the minor public school where we both found ourselves incarcerated for the duration of our rebellious years, Bill had acquired the nickname ‘Mad Munks’ for his over-enthusiastic playing style on the rugby field. His habit of leading with his head had resulted in his having his nose broken twice to my knowledge. He was a big man, and a brusque one, with a pronounced Yorkshire accent.

Bill came from a family of policemen. His father had
risen to Assistant Chief Constable in the Derbyshire Constabulary, and his younger brother, Ron, had joined the Royal Hong Kong Police Force before becoming the head security advisor to a large corporate in the Far East.

Bill’s career had been hampered by
his reputation as a maverick. During the miners’ strike of 1984, he was implicated in the police attack on striking miners in South Yorkshire, where it was shown that the South Yorkshire Police had fabricated evidence and carried out false arrests. No officer was ever disciplined over the incident, but it appeared to have cast a pall over some of those involved. The Hillsborough disaster five years later pushed the force even deeper into public opprobrium.

Bill sat opposite me at a discreet corner table in the country pub between Leicester and Coventry where I had
planned to meet Anna on Friday. It was beyond my limited brain capacity that week to come up with two venues.

My companion was dressed informally so as not to draw attention. He had put on some weight
, but his pugilistic air was still evident. His shoulders were even broader than I remembered them to be. That was just as well, given what I was about to tell him.

“Thanks for driving all the way down here, Bill. I appreciate it.”

“By the tone of your voice, it sounded urgent. So, talk.” Straight to the nub, as ever.

“Can I speak to you in confidence?”

“Up to a point, David. I am a police officer, and if there is a crime involved there is a limit as to what can be kept quiet. I may as well tell you that now before you say anything.” Bill fixed his steel-grey eyes on me and I wondered what it would be like to be in an interrogation room with him.

“I’m not sure where to start.”

He said nothing. Instead he took a drink of beer.

I
had already decided not to tell Bill about the anonymous letter and phone calls. If I could keep Claire out of this, I would, even though that might cast me in a guilty light should he later learn about my wife’s affair.

“There is an American I have come to know through the Chamber of Commerce. His name is James Fosse and he is some kind of consultant
to the power industry. He spends a lot of time travelling in Asia, doing deals and fixing things. Some months ago, during an evening where we’d both been drinking, he raised the subject of my doing away with his wife in return for his disposing of mine. Sort of a tit-for-tat thing, where we would present each other with solid alibis.”

“Go on.”

“I wrote it off as a joke at the time. But he kept coming back to me about it.”

“Why you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he think there was some reason you might want your wife dead?”

“No.”

“
Is
there some reason you might want your wife dead?” The tone was casual, but Bill was watching my reaction.

“No. For goodness’ sake, Bill, you’ve met Claire.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “Relationships change, David. The divorce rate testifies to that. And do you know in nine out of ten murders, it’s the spouse that did it? He or she always starts as the prime suspect, despite the many tears they shed. It’s a sad fact of modern life.” My companion gazed moodily at his beer. “Though, to be frank, I doubt it’s a recent phenomenon. As soon as the first caveman learned how to use a club, I expect the next thing he did was to hit his woman over the head with it. Forget about serial killers and robberies gone wrong. The most insidious crime ring on the planet is the one you wear on the third finger of your left hand.”

Bill
stretched back in his chair and his gaze flicked over the horse brasses that were nailed to the pub’s wooden beams. “Still,” he said lightly, “it sounds like Mr. Fosse has a fertile, if somewhat febrile, imagination. ‘You kill my wife and I’ll kill yours.’ You must admit, as a proposition, it has an alluring symmetry to it.” He looked back at me. “I take it there is more to this story?”

“Yesterday he called me and told me his wife – Monique – had gone missing. He thanked me and said he would repay the favour.”

“And has she indeed gone missing?”

“I don’t know
. There’s been nothing in the news that I’ve seen.”

Bill
flexed his legs. “Fosse sounds like a Walter Mitty character to me, David. Someone who gets his kicks from winding people up.”

“Maybe so. But he said he’d been questioned by the Leicester police.”

“Well, that’s easy to check. Give me five minutes to make a call and put your mind to rest.”

Bill rose to his feet and lumbered out of the pub, leaving me with the distinct impression he
regarded me as a hysterical idiot.

When he returned, his attitude was completely different.

“I’ve just spoken to DCI Banks at Leicester. A Monique Fosse has been reported missing and her husband has been questioned. Banks is sure she disappeared while her husband was out of the country. You’d better go through this with me in detail and I need to make some notes. I haven’t mentioned your name to Banks yet, but you’ll have to talk to him too.”

“I understand.
There is something else about Jim Fosse you should know. Monique is his second wife. His first wife, in Greensboro, Carolina, died of mushroom poisoning.”

“Did she, now?” Bill
paused for a moment. “I have a friend in the NYPD. Met him on an exchange programme. He might be able to dig out something for me on that, as a favour. Tell me everything you know, David. And I mean
everything
.”

I told Bill
almost
everything. The anonymous letter, the phone calls and Cumberbatch did not feature in my narrative. Bill wrote a lot of notes.

“I can’t promise to keep this quiet, David. You may end up as a material witness, depending how things go. Have you said anything to Claire?”

“No. I want to keep her out of this if I can.”

“Have you mentioned it to anyone else?”

“No.”

Anna doesn’t count, right?

“Have you spoken to Fosse again?”

“No. He’s not answering his phone.”

“Don’t ring him again. Not yet, anyway.”

“Gotcha.”
             

He
tapped his fingers on the table.

“Let me see what I can find out about Fosse from the other side of the pond. But you must understand, this is Banks’ baby, not mine.”

“Understood. By the way, there is one other thing. The bastard sent me a text message that he is going to start laying a new patio next weekend when he gets back from his business trip.”

“
Fosse sounds like a right twat.” He beamed at me. “That’s a technical police term, by the way.”

I felt drained when I finally arrived home.

“Work is just ridiculous at the moment,” I told Claire.

“You’ll cope, darling.” She kissed me. “If not, you’re not the man I married.”

The creature who was evolving into a new
, mendacious David Braddock laughed, went into the garden and lit a Marlboro.