False Report (3 page)

‘CJ softened me up by treating me to tea at the Ritz.'

‘Do they still have a pianist? The last time I went, I got the impression that the soft pedal had been wired down so that she didn't make too much noise.'

Bea spurted into laughter, and he smiled. He was not – as CJ had noted – agonizing over past sins of omission or commission. Rather against her better judgement, Bea found herself liking the little man. She found it difficult to imagine anyone less likely to start pawing young girls. He hadn't even looked at her legs, which were worth a look, though she said so herself. Neither had his eyes lingered on the cleavage to be glimpsed under her gauzy top. CJ had been right; this man was not particularly interested in sex.

‘I need someone to come in perhaps twice a week to keep me straight. Can you arrange that? I'm currently in a furnished one-bedroom flat which is also my studio for the time being, though I'm looking for a place where I can have my grand piano and where it won't matter if I play music all hours of the day and night.'

‘Two hours, for two mornings a week?'

‘You would know best. Do I have to sign a contract or something?'

‘I'll send you one, if you'll let me have your current address.'

He extracted a business card, crossed out one address and wrote in another. ‘The mobile number is the same. I haven't been able to fix up a landline yet.'

‘Lots of people don't bother with a landline, nowadays.' She gave him her card, too.

‘I see you live very near my new place.' He smiled, relaxed. ‘Thank you, Mrs Abbot. I don't know why CJ had to drag you out here. We could have done this over the phone.'

She was terse. ‘You know perfectly well that he's staged this meeting in this public place so that we can talk without being overheard. He wants me to find out if you are a saint or a sinner.'

‘Neither, I'm afraid.'

‘Who is? Would it help to talk?'

‘Not really. I'm sorry about the girl dying. She didn't deserve that. But –' an expressive shrug – ‘I have an alibi for the time of her death, which is rather extraordinary when you come to think of it, because I had intended to work late by myself last night, only I got stuck and went out for a walk. That's when I remembered Clarissa was playing in a concert locally. And then I met CJ. If I hadn't, I suppose I might even have gone to meet Josie when she asked . . . and then I'd have been in the soup, wouldn't I?'

Thursday afternoon

Nance, on the phone. ‘I'm on the train, just coming into Kings Cross station. Have the police arrested him yet?'

‘They took him away for questioning all right – but he's back, free as air.'

‘You must have messed up, telling them about him.'

‘I told the police, just as you said, then I went round to watch his flat from across the road for a bit, but there's no cover there and I didn't half get some odd looks. Anyway, he came back in a taxi about midnight, went upstairs, put the lights on for a few minutes, then turned them off. Didn't come out again. Some busybody said I was up to no good, lurking in the shadows, and she was going to ring the police if I didn't scarper, so I did. But I went back this morning to check.

‘His flat's above a corner café, all the locals use it. The chap who runs it is quite a character, a great gossip. Someone said he'd been inside for drugs once, but has been clean for years. Anyway, Josie's murder was front page news, as you can imagine. Everyone was talking about it, and they were only too happy to include me in the gossip. Apparently the police turned up this morning and took my laddo away with them. So everyone added two and two, and connected him with it.

‘I relaxed, ordered a panini, but blow me down, he was back an hour later, just as I was about to leave! The only thing I can think of is that he'd arranged for himself to have an alibi and got someone else to knock her off.'

‘True, his wife's got contacts through her work in the courts, but she threw him out so—'

‘There's more. I told the man at the café that I earned my living feeding news items to the newspapers and would pay good money to find out what was happening. So he phoned me a while back to say the little man had come down from his flat and was walking along the road towards Church Street. Well, I'd just settled in with a pint up the road so I scrambled back only to see him getting on a bus into town. I was lucky enough to get a taxi to follow him. And, would you believe, he got off in Piccadilly and walked along to where all the toffee-nobs hang out, the Royal Academy, you know, private courtyard with all those weird sculptures in it?

‘He went straight up to a woman, not young, well-preserved fifties, looks the sort you wouldn't want to mess with, and took her through into the café at the back. He's sitting in there now, chatting away to her like they were old friends. Could this be his wife?'

‘What? I don't believe this!'

‘I'm having a sandwich myself, but keeping them in sight. Don't worry, he's no idea he's being followed.'

Thursday afternoon

Bea said, ‘Jeremy, do you really think that if it hadn't been for the coincidence of meeting CJ, you'd have been arrested for murder?'

‘I suppose so.' He eyed the cheese and biscuits. ‘Aren't you going to eat those? No?' He transferred them to his side of the table and tucked in. She was amazed at his ability to put away so much food so quickly. And him without an ounce of fat on him. She remembered her mother saying, of a healthy, hungry, teenager, ‘He's got hollow legs.' She stifled a grin. ‘What was the girl like?'

‘Josie? Nice kid, I thought. Well, I wasn't thinking, was I? I was wafting around on the wings of song, on a deadline, should have delivered the day before but fortunately they'd let me have an extension till the end of the week . . . just like this week, come to think of it, when I've had it up to here, my brains made of mushy peas, and I'm taking the day off, hoping that I think of a way to lead back into the theme song without . . . but you don't know anything about music, do you? I can see from your face that I'm boring you. I'm afraid I do tend to bore people about it so I usually don't start but . . .' He tapped a rhythm out on her teapot, shook his head, and said, ‘No, no. That won't do, either. I have to finish in the key of A major, which probably sounds like Esperanto, or as near as, to you.'

‘Josie,' she said, trying not to laugh. ‘A nice kid, you thought. But . . .?'

He shook his head at himself. ‘You know, I taught music in that school for twenty-odd years and I still didn't see it coming. I mean, I'm not exactly the sort to attract kids, am I? What's more, I'm married, though I suppose . . .' Again he shook his head at himself. He seized the last piece of cheese, lathered a biscuit with the last of the butter, and popped the whole into his mouth. ‘Yum, yum, bubble gum. You don't fancy some more tea, do you? That cup must be cold by now.'

‘You say you were married,' said Bea. ‘Not any longer?'

‘She threw me out. Is divorcing me.' He looked around with a vague expression on his face. ‘I don't know why I was surprised when it happened, because we hadn't had much to say to one another for a long time, and I'm not exactly love's young dream, am I?'

Bea shook her head, smiling. Indeed he wasn't.

‘It suited us both to stay married, I suppose. I was proud of her, and we both love the house. It was my parents' house, you know. Both dead. I suppose I'll have to sell up and give her half the proceeds. Clarissa's eighteen, almost grown-up. I love having a stepdaughter. I probably saw more of her when she was in her teens than Eunice ever did. I'm sorry that she believes . . .' His voice trailed away.

Bea said, ‘CJ said you were a teacher?'

‘From Eunice's point of view, mine was never much of a job; teaching the rudiments of music to adolescents, no great kudos or money or anything. Looking back, I suspect she'd begun to get bored with me, what with her being such a high flyer and getting more and more highly paid briefs. Understandable, don't you think? I know that when I tried to tell her about writing music for television, she wasn't at all interested. I suppose the writing was on the wall then, only I didn't see it coming.'

‘Couldn't you have kept your house?'

‘To tell the truth, I was so shocked that I . . . I couldn't think straight. She told me to pack some things and go to a hotel. So I did. Then I went down the road to the estate agents and asked them to find me a flat, and they did. Ideally, I'd like to find somewhere with a bit more space. I've got this small flat over a café at the back of Church Street at the moment. It's a bit shabby, but there is an upright piano there, iron frame, wonder of wonders, and it's reasonably in tune, too, which you can never be sure about in rented accommodation.'

‘Might I be correct in saying that Eunice married you, rather than that you courted her?'

‘Mm? Oh yes, I suppose so. She'd had a bad time with her first, you know, and there I was, managing to push Clarissa through her exams and I was a good listener in those days because I've never had anything to do with the law courts, and I did find her work fascinating. Could you manage a coffee by any chance? Keep me company?'

‘In a minute.'

‘She's brilliant, you know. Quite brilliant. A divorce lawyer, top class. I admire her tremendously. How she manages the house and her job and her daughter, and me . . . I have to take my hat off to her, I really do. But when she's on a high-profile case we don't see much of one another, and of course when she is free she likes to party, and that's not really my scene, you know, which was a bit of a disappointment to her. Though I did try to fit in at first. Later she got someone from her chambers to squire her around. Nice man. Younger. He's going through a divorce, too.'

A marriage heading towards the rocks? What had Eunice seen in this gentle, talented man? A house in a good location. A biddable partner, who wouldn't create waves if she had someone else to party with her? ‘What about your stepdaughter?'

‘Clarissa? Oh, she's well on her way, doesn't need me any more, which is as it should be, don't you think?'

‘Would you have called yourself a house husband, then?'

Another laugh, genuine. ‘Heavens, no. I'd have forgotten to pay the paper bill, run out of toilet paper. We had a woman who came in two hours a day and I suppose she really ran the house for us. Eunice usually ordered the food online because I made such a mess of it when I tried and caterers dealt with all the important social occasions.'

‘And then Josie came along? How did that happen?'

‘She rang the bell after I got back from school one day. Said she'd just arrived in London and was looking for a Mrs Shackleton who was supposed to be letting her a room. She was on the verge of hysterics, said she'd been mugged when she'd asked a man for directions. She was in a terrible state, mud all over her legs and coat. She practically fell into my arms. Eunice and Clarissa were out. I sat her down in the hall, looked up Mrs Shackleton in the phone book; she lived in the next road. I gave the girl a cup of tea and sent her on her way with a fiver. I told Eunice about it, I think. She says I didn't. But I . . . I suppose she's right and I forgot.

‘Anyway, the girl came back a couple of days later with a bunch of flowers for me, saying how everything was turning up right for her, that she'd been promised a good job to start the following week and would pay me back the fiver then. I congratulated her. She was a pretty little thing, appealing. She asked if I were any good at arranging the flowers she'd brought me, and I said I wasn't, so she came in to do it for me. Then she made me a cup of tea and chatted for a little while. There wasn't anything in it, you know.'

Except that he hadn't been getting much attention from the other women in his life, by the sound of it. He'd been lonely. He'd been set up.

‘What was her full name?'

He looked blank. ‘Kelly? O'Reilly? Something Irish. I really can't remember.'

‘How many times did she return?'

‘I wasn't counting. Four or five? Over a couple of weeks. Looking back, it seems more, but I don't think it can have been more than five. And then the sky fell on me. I'd got into the habit of going to bed early and working there when Eunice was away, as she was that night. Clarissa was out, partying. The bedroom door opened, and there was Josie, stripping off a coat to reveal herself in the altogether and jumping on top of me in bed. And me without me dentures in! Then there's camera flashes all over the place, with her pressed close to me. Screaming, “Oh, no!” And me shouting, “Get off me!”'

He gave a sad little laugh. ‘Do you know, I still can't believe it? We used to call it “the Badger Game”. Do they still call it that nowadays?'

‘Entrapment? The girl gets the man into a compromising position, her partner takes photos, and then demands money for the negatives. How did she get in?'

‘I've no idea. I suppose she must have taken an impression of a front door key on one of her visits. We used to keep a spare key hanging up above a table at the back of the hall, for emergencies. Maybe she even took that one. I didn't think to look, after. I certainly didn't watch her all the time she was in the house. I thought we were friends.'

His mouth turned down into a clown's grimace of misery. Yes, her betrayal had hurt. ‘They must have looked at the house – which my parents bought fifty years ago and which is worth a mint – and worked out how much my wife earned and thought I was worth a shakedown.'

‘Who's “they”?'

‘The man with the camera, I don't know his name, he said to call him John. John and Josie. They were a team. He was dressed all in black and he wore a Mickey Mouse mask. Frightening, you know?' he added, thinking about it. ‘Rough voice. As soon as he'd got enough pictures, she put her coat back on and said she'd wait outside till he'd finished. It was like a bad dream. I got out of bed and put on my dressing gown over my pyjamas—'