Mixing With Murder (17 page)

‘Who found him?’ the drier of the coppers asked, staring at Tom and Maryann. ‘Was it you?’

‘She says she did,’ said Maryann, pointing at me. Though fond of giving her opinion she was shy of taking responsibility. There are a lot of people like that.

‘This is Fran,’ said Tom in his chivalrous way. ‘Come right over, Fran, and tell the officer what you saw.’

Step right up, little lady, and take part in our show.

‘Your name is, miss?’

‘Fran Varady. I’m just a visitor to the city. I’m staying at the same guest house as Tom and Maryann. I was walking along the path here and I saw him in the water.’

‘She isn’t with us. She was in the water with him,’ said Maryann immediately. ‘She wasn’t on the path like she said. She was right there in the water up to her neck. She was by the body, up real close, and manhandling it.’

‘I fell in!’ I fairly yelled at her. I turned to the police officers. ‘I thought if I could grab his ankle I could drag him up the steps there, sort of rescue him. I know it was daft. I lost my footing on the steps and fell in. I was going to call nine-nine-nine. I had my mobile phone in my hand.’

‘She didn’t have a cellphone in her hand when we came by,’ said Maryann. Had I done something before this morning to upset her? I wondered.

‘Look,’ I snapped. ‘I dropped it when I fell in. It’s down there somewhere at the bottom of the river. I was floundering in the water when Tom and Maryann came along in their punt.’

‘I thought it seemed kind of odd, seeing someone swimming about in the river like that, fully clothed and so early in the morning,’ declared Tom in a masterpiece of understatement. ‘But I recognised Fran. I called out to ask what was wrong and then I saw the John Doe there.’ He indicated Ivo over whose still form two paramedics were now crouched.

‘He would not allow us to attempt artificial respiration,’ boomed the academic man from a few feet away. ‘Now, of course, it’s far too late.’

‘Fran?’ asked a voice at my elbow.

It was DS Hayley Pereira. My troubles were complete.

Pereira drove me back to the guest house. Beryl met us in the hall and after a first startled look, only said, ‘You’d better get out of those wet trousers, love. Had a bath you didn’t want?’

‘I fell in the river,’ I said.

Pereira had me by the elbow. She gave me a little push. She didn’t want me discussing what had happened with anyone until she’d talked to me first. ‘Where’s your room?’

‘Upstairs, at the back,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and—’

She acted on my information and ignored what I’d been about to add. She was coming too. We got upstairs to my room in record time.

‘Do you have a change of jeans?’

‘Yes,’ I said, annoyed. ‘I have a change of clothing. You sit there if you want.’ I pointed to the chair with arms, ‘I’ll go and change in the bathroom.’

She hesitated.

‘Oh, do me a favour!’ I exploded, even angrier. ‘Let me get out of these wet things before I catch pneumonia? What’s your problem? I’m not carrying any banned substances. Look!’ With an effort I pulled my soaked jeans pockets inside out. I also pulled off Tom’s jacket, which left me in my bra, and tossed it on the bed. ‘You can take a look in that, but it belongs to Tom, the American, and if you find anything in there, it’s his. Although I had my hands in the pockets and they’re empty. Anyway, he’s the type who, if he ever did smoke anything, didn’t inhale. I can’t contact anyone because I haven’t got a mobile phone. It’s in the river. If you find it, it’s registered to Ganesh Patel, the friend who lent it to me. I’ll leave the door of this room open and you can see the bathroom, right across the corridor. I can’t slip out.’

‘OK,’ she said smoothly. ‘But leave the door open, both doors.’

I stomped away in a bad temper, ostentatiously pushing both bedroom and bathroom doors open to their fullest extent and wedging them. I wondered, if I couldn’t shut myself in the bathroom, whether I could position myself out of her direct line of sight. But that was difficult. There was a mirror hanging on the wall right opposite the door and she could probably see me wherever I stood. The best I could do was turn my back to her as I peeled off my sodden jeans with great difficulty and got into dry ones. I also pulled a clean T-shirt over my head. I rubbed my hair with a towel and peered in the mirror. I looked like something that had been dragged up from the river bed. Heck, I
had
dragged myself up from the river bed. Over my shoulder, I could see Pereira back in my room, perched on the chair I’d offered her, with her ankles crossed like they told us to do at the private school for young ladies I went to. It made me wonder where Pereira had gone to school. Her face was expressionless but her eyes were fixed on me. No way was I getting the chance to drop anything down the lavatory pan or conceal it behind the cistern.

‘How are you feeling, Fran?’ she asked kindly when I got back. She’d decided for the sympathetic approach having realised I was pretty nervy.

‘Like I nearly drowned and I’ve been eyeball to eyeball with a dead bloke,’ I snarled.

‘Shall I ask the landlady for some tea?’

‘I don’t want tea!’ I growled ungratefully and plumped myself down on the edge of the bed.

‘Can you tell me about it?’

I do so hate it when the police are being nice to you. They adopt a friendly, cosy tone which isn’t reflected in their eyes. I’d rather they just behaved like their usual surly selves.

‘Yeah,’ I mumbled.

She took out a notebook and pen. She was going to write it down.

I’d had time in the bathroom to put together a sort of story which I’d stick to. I began it with, ‘On my walks from here into the town centre I’ve been going over Magdalen Bridge and I noticed there was this big sort of park area behind it. So this morning, I thought I’d go down there and have a look round.’

Pereira didn’t say anything, just scribbled in her book.

‘I found the river path and I was walking along that. It was nice, very quiet.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else?’ She looked up and raised her eyebrows, pen poised.

‘No, not on the path. I saw some people earlier when I came through the gate at the end of Rose Lane. There were some joggers but they were heading away from the river. There was a woman with a dog and two men who came along the riverside path later after I’d found - found it. One of them later insisted on speaking to the police because Tom, that’s the American, hadn’t let him try artificial respiration. Well, I don’t think he was offering to do it. I think he wanted someone else to do it. But Tom said the man in the water was certainly dead. I think he was right.’

‘Oh?’ Pereira said. ‘What made you think he was beyond resuscitation?’

‘Because I had some crazy idea of trying to drag him out although I probably couldn’t have done it. But I fell in, trying to catch his legs from the stone steps there. I splashed about and the - the body rocked in the water. His head came up and I saw his face. His eyes were open and sort of glassy. I reckoned he was dead. Then Tom and Maryann came along in their punt.’

‘Yes, the two young Americans. I’ll have to talk to them next.’

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ I said. ‘Tom took over. His father is an officer in the homicide department of the New York police.’

‘Is he, indeed?’ said Pereira wearily. I supposed people who reckoned they knew the drill ended up causing more problems than those who knew they were amateurs.

‘Tom gave me his jacket so I could take off my wet shirt.’

Pereira handed me her notebook. ‘Can you read that through and, if you agree with it, sign it?’

I took the little book, scanned my statement and scrawled my name at the bottom.

She took it back and looked at it. ‘Varady?’ she said.

‘It’s Hungarian.’

‘Mine’s Portuguese,’ she said. ‘Nobody knows how to spell it.’

‘Nobody knows how to pronounce mine,’ I said. ‘They say Var
ad
y. It’s
Var
ady.’

‘Nor mine. I’ve been advised to change it but I don’t see why I should.’

She gave me a sympathetic grin inviting me into the club of those who struggle with the burden of a foreign surname. I wasn’t joining it.

‘Up to you, I suppose,’ I said.

‘Right,’ she returned briskly, knowing she’d been rebuffed. ‘I need a permanent address for you. That will be in London?’

I gave it to her.

She sat back and looked at me thoughtfully. I waited for her to ask the question I dreaded which was, had I recognised the dead man? But she didn’t. If she had I would have told her I didn’t know him even though that would have put me in the position of telling a lie. Although I can lie with confidence if I need to - my dramatic training, you know - if in some way she later found out, I’d be for it. But if I confessed I knew Ivo, I’d have to explain how and why and when and bring Lisa into it. The fat would be in the fire and Allerton would be longing to turn me on a spit over it. What was it the Greek sailors found themselves between? The whirlpool and the moving rocks, Scylla and Charybdis, that’s it. A good education always throws up these useless nuggets of information at inappropriate moments.

Then I thought, why should she ask if I knew him? I was a stranger in Oxford, she knew that. The dead man hadn’t been identified and there was as yet no reason to suppose he wasn’t a local keep-fit enthusiast. Nor had she any reason to suppose his being in the river was anything but an accident. He’d collapsed while jogging, possibly with the heart attack Tom had wished on him. Perhaps, I thought wistfully and I feared in vain, it would be put down as an accident at a future coroner’s inquest. But not if they couldn’t identify him. Then it would start to look suspicious. If he lived in Oxford, someone ought to notice he wasn’t there and come forward to report him missing, even claim the body. A totally unidentifiable man in running kit floating in the river, that’s weird. Where were the rest of his clothes? I frowned. Ivo couldn’t have travelled down from London early that morning in running shorts, surely?

The whole thing stank nearly as badly as I must do. I couldn’t see it being an accident myself. Not with the dead body being Mickey Allerton’s doorman. What on earth was Ivo doing in Oxford? Had Mickey sent him along to watch over me? Ganesh had been right, of course. Mickey hadn’t told me the entire story. There was something going on and I was in the middle of it like a woman lost in thick fog. Once I got rid of Pereira, I would need to do some serious orienteering.

Instead of the question I’d feared, Pereira asked, ‘The two joggers you saw when you came from Rose Lane on to Christ Church Meadow - they were jogging away from the river, you say?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t mean they’d come immediately from the river. I was just indicating the direction they were taking, jogging away from me down the gravel drive towards the town in the distance. I don’t know where they’d been before that.’

‘Hm,’ she tapped the notebook with her pen. ‘Can you describe them?’

‘Not really. They were youngish. Both white male, of middle height and both fairly stocky in build. They wore running shorts. I only saw them from the corner of my eye and didn’t pay that much attention. I can’t even be sure they were young. I didn’t look at their faces. They jogged like young men, bouncing along full of beans. Not like older ones, making hard work of it.’

A smile played across her face for a second and I wondered if my last words suggested someone to her. She made a note. I could see where her mind was headed. She needed to find people who had seen the dead man before he went in the river, probably running. The joggers were obvious as possible witnesses if they could be tracked down. I began to wonder about them, too. I wish I’d paid more attention to them. I didn’t think Ivo had fallen in the river all by himself. Nor did I subscribe to the theory he’d had a heart attack. As for mugging, if a mugger had tackled Ivo, he’d soon have found out his mistake. He would have been the one found floating in the water. What kind of person could take on Ivo in a physical confrontation and come out the winner? Someone who was as strong as he was, obviously. Or someone who was . . .

Pereira was speaking again. She had folded her notebook and tucked it away in her black leather shoulder bag. She wasn’t wearing her short skirt and cherry-red jacket today, perhaps that was London wear. She wore what looked like designer jeans, a peacock-blue top and expensive trainers. The only other policewoman with whom I had any close acquaintance, Inspector Janice Morgan back in London, dressed like a bereavement counsellor. It was a pity Morgan couldn’t adopt some of Pereira’s style. But if they dressed differently, their minds worked much the same way.