Rotten Apples (19 page)

‘No,' she said, trying to bounce him into telling the whole truth. ‘I won't forgive it, just as I can't forgive your not being frank with me in the first place. Don't you think what's happened to me gives me the right to all the information you have about Doctor Fydgett and about everyone in Kate Moughette's office?'

The minister looked at his surprisingly extravagant watch and then up at Willow again. His lips were very thin and his eyes cold. But he did not look at all ashamed.

‘You certainly have every right to know why I wanted you to go there. As I have said before: I needed information about what happened, both in order to provide a basis for new legislation and in case questions should be asked about the cause of Doctor Fydgett's death. You must know that I am appalled at what you've had to suffer—and how inordinately relieved I am that your injuries are not worse.'

Willow watched him for a moment, trying to decide whether he was sincere. ‘Did it ever occur to you that Fiona Fydgett's death might not have been suicide?' she asked bluntly. The minister's expression of astonishment was all Willow needed, but he gave her words too.

‘Certainly not. It never crossed my mind—nor that of the coroner or anyone who knew her. I don't think you should worry about that.'

‘I see,' said Willow, still trying to find out why the minister was so obstructive. She knew, without being able to say why, that he was concealing something from her. ‘Have the police interviewed you yet about Scoffer's death?'

‘They've been in touch with me to confirm your reasons for being at the Vauxhall Bridge Road office, yes.'

‘And were they satisfied?'

‘Naturally.' No old-school Tory grandee could have sounded more dignified.

‘I don't believe it,' said Willow, trying to be offensive in order to provoke him into telling the truth. ‘The police can be intensely irritating, but they're not generally stupid, at least not the sort who get to investigate arson and murder.'

The minister crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair and allowed his chin to sink into his chest. ‘I really do think that, understandably, you have let yourself get worked up by all this. Why not take a few days off? I'm sure that when you've had a proper rest and recovered, you'll be able to see things in much better proportion. And the report can wait a few more days.'

‘They know that you sent me there to make investigations,' Willow went on without listening to his advice. ‘They know that the man I was investigating is now dead. They must have wanted to know more.'

The minister raised his shaggy eyebrows. ‘But I understood that it's been sorted out. I suppose the verdict will be manslaughter rather than murder, and, in view of his age and the strain he's been under since his mother died, he'll be treated mercifully. Perhaps even a suspended sentence and some psychiatric care. I certainly hope so. After all, he can't have known that either you or Scoffer would still be there at that hour.'

‘Wait a minute,' said Willow, realising that the minister had more information on Rob Fydgett than she had managed to get. ‘Are you really telling me that you believe them: that you think Fiona Fydgett's son set fire to the place?'

‘Why, don't you?' asked the minister in a reasonable voice.

She stretched her legs, feeling them ache from the first exercise she had taken for days.

‘Because it seems ludicrous to suspect a respectable schoolboy of something so destructive,' she said, ignoring everything she had read about crimes that had been committed by boys during the past few years. ‘And there's no real evidence as far as I've heard. All the police have is circumstantial. As far as I know there's nothing to put Fydgett at the scene of the fire, no fingerprints, no witness sightings, nothing. There's nothing more than a vague suspicion based on the fact that he loved his mother and might have wanted to take revenge on the man he believed responsible for her death.'

‘I gather there's a bit more than that,' said the minister, ‘otherwise they would hardly have brought him for questioning. But naturally I haven't been given any details. We have to leave it to the police and the courts.' He smiled kindly and, when she said nothing, added: ‘Is that all you wanted, then?'

He brushed some stray blond hairs off his jacket Willow assumed that they were his own. From where she was sitting they looked the right length and texture. But they were enough to raise a new suspicion in her mind.

What if George Profett had not only known Fiona Fydgett, but perhaps even been one of her lovers? What if his anxieties about her suicide were more personal than he had suggested? Regretfully Willow told herself that she was being absurd again.

‘No,' she said aloud. ‘I want an end to this shiftiness. I want to know exactly what it was you thought I'd find in Scoffer's office and how you thought I'd do it, working blind like that.'

As she saw the obstinate look return to the minister's thin face, Willow tried again. ‘Please don't waste any more time. Yours or mine,' she said. She thought that she saw a softening in his eyes, as though he had decided to co-operate.

‘Please,' she said again to urge him on.

‘It's all rather delicate in the circumstances,' he said abruptly, swinging his chair round so that the only part of him Willow could see was an absurd little tuft of fair hair sticking out over the leather top.

‘So there is something else. I thought so. Nothing that leads to arson can be too delicate to explain,' Willow said, holding on to her anger. ‘There will only be more trouble if it doesn't get sorted out now.'

The minister swung back again, more slowly. Willow was surprised to see that his face was flushed. She did not think that he was aware that he had stuck his tongue between his teeth and was biting it.

‘It is true that I had another motive in sending you there. It was of minor importance compared with the Fydgett case, but it is true that it existed. I had planned to keep it to myself, but I suppose you'd better hear it all now, if only to prevent you making unintentional mischief.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Some weeks ago, fairly soon after my appointment, I was contacted by Leonard Scoffer, who told me that he was worried about possible corruption in his office.'

‘Why on earth didn't you tell me that in the first place?' Willow demanded, thinking immediately of Jason Tillter and his flashy suits and expensive silk ties. She also thought of the look of satisfaction he had been wearing when she first saw him after Len's death.

‘Because everyone in authority agreed that there was no possibility that the allegation was justifiable. I merely wanted Scoffer to believe that I had sent someone to the office in order to stop him taking any more action.'

‘But whom did he suspect?'

The minister looked even more uncomfortable and began to fiddle with the ornamental pen set at the further edge of his desk. It was a horrible contraption of vomit-green onyx and thin gold-coloured metal.

‘That's what makes it all so delicate. He accused Kate Moughette of taking bribes in order to end investigations into taxpayers'affairs. I talked to Sir Roland Collins-Nestor, the Chairman, who had some extensive enquiries made and was able to assure me that there was no possibility of anything of the kind. Apparently the powers-that-be were well aware of Scoffer's dislike of Moughette and of his ideas about her.'

No wonder the atmosphere in the office was so full of aggression, thought Willow, wishing that she had brought a tape recorder with her. She did not want to miss—or forget—anything the minister might say.

‘He'd already been on to them with his delusions. And I must stress again that they are certain that Scoffer was deluded. He was due to retire at the end of this year and it was thought that the problem would simply disappear with him. He'd made Moughette's job even more difficult than it would otherwise have been, and she's thought to have handled him well.'

‘But you disagreed, didn't you?' suggested Willow, trying to keep all sounds of judgment out of her voice. ‘Why?'

‘It wasn't that I disagreed with their conclusions about Moughette's probity,' he said stiffly. ‘I have no reason to doubt that at all. I simply thought they were over-confident about her containment of Scoffer. The very fact that he'd written to me suggested that he was not going to stop his campaign.'

‘I wish you'd told me.'

‘I couldn't. Slander, for one thing,' said the minister, looking at her with less defensiveness. ‘As I say, I thought that your presence there might in itself keep him quiet. We don't want to rock any boats at the moment, and I was afraid that if he got no satisfaction from me he might go to the press.'

‘There I think you underestimated his sense of duty,' said Willow in a judicious tone. ‘He seemed to me to be devoted to the service. I don't think he'd ever have done anything to bring it into disrepute. But you do see what this means, don't you?'

The minister shook his head.

‘You must tell the police. It widens their enquiries hugely. For one thing it puts Kate Moughette in the frame for the arson.'

‘Don't be absurd.' The tone in which the minister spoke was surprisingly tolerant. It was not that of a man being given orders by someone well below him in the chain of command. Willow wondered why.

‘I'm not,' she said. ‘Apart from Scoffer and me, she was the last to leave the office. She did her best to get me to leave, too. She was virtually the only person who could have made him stay, and she could easily have stripped the wires that ran between their two rooms and put some accelerant down to catch the sparks.'

‘Is that how it was done?'

‘I don't know,' said Willow in frustration. ‘I assumed you would. They won't tell me anything useful. And I know nothing whatsoever about electricity—or starting fires. Look, Minister, this is really serious. Will you ring Superintendent Blackled or shall I?'

‘I don't know any Superintendent Blackled. I've been dealing with a man called Stephen Harness, who already knows everything that I know.'

‘You mean you've told him about Kate Moughette?'

‘Of course I have. What do you take me for?' Profett sounded amused rather than angry. ‘Now, have you anything else to ask? If not, I really must be getting on.'

Willow clamped her teeth together, still frustrated and wishing that she could get a proper grip on her mind again. She shook her head. ‘I'll draft my report as soon as I can get my fingers accurately on to the keys,' she said, looking at the bandages.

‘Thank you. And please believe me when I say again how sorry I am at what has happened to you.'

‘Oh, I do,' said Willow, hitching the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder. ‘I'll leave you to it now. Goodbye, Minister.'

‘Goodbye.'

As she walked to the door of his office, she could not help wondering whether he had yet been completely frank about his motives for sending her to the tax office.

George Profett might never have been anywhere near an image consultant, he might look unimpeachably honest, but he had fought his way into Parliament and on to the front bench, and to do that he must have made himself agreeable to voters, whips and colleagues. It was unlikely that all of them had shared all his views, and yet he had managed to persuade them that he was the best man for the job. Either he had fudged some of his beliefs or he was a super-salesman.

A taxi was depositing a quartet of American tourists outside the Palace of Westminster as she emerged, and she took it over from them, asking the driver to get her home as fast as possible. Looking at her swollen face and bandaged hands, he obviously assumed that she was ill and roared off into the middle of the traffic, frantically signalling and flashing his headlights at anyone who got in the way. Willow, who had wanted to get home quickly, but not quite that quickly, had to hang on to the strap above the door during some of his more ferocious manoeuvres, and closed her eyes as the taxi almost crashed into the side of an enormous lorry.

With her mind playing around Scoffer's allegations of corruption, the first thing she did when she got back into the house was to search the Yellow Pages for a list of private detectives. Checking that there was still time before offices closed for the day, she tried one of the agencies in the list.

The woman she spoke to sounded quite untroubled by the fact that Willow wanted private financial information about a group of individuals but the price she quoted for providing it was enormous. Willow thanked her and tried another agency.

That turned out to be a one-man band, and the man in question, whose name was Brian Gaskarth, quoted her a much more reasonable fee. Willow accepted it at once.

‘It's all rather urgent,' she said when Gaskarth had repeated all the names she gave him, checking that he had got the spelling right. ‘How soon can you get it for me?'

‘Twenty-four hours probably,' he said, making no comment on any of the names. ‘Perhaps less.'

‘Great. D'you have police sources as well?'

‘A few. Why?'

‘I'd like to find out what evidence they have on a suspect they've been interviewing about…'

‘That's not the kind of information I can provide,' said the man at once. His unaccented voice did not sound at all shocked or angry, merely firm. ‘Criminal records? Yes. Car ownership? Yes. But not ongoing investigations. I don't say it's impossible, but it's not part of the service I offer.'

‘Pity. Never mind. Get me the financial stuff and I'll be happy. D'you need paying in advance?'

‘Cash when I bring the reports would be fine.'

‘Cash?' repeated Willow, thinking of his tax position.

‘It's simpler,' he said, ‘than waiting for cheques to clear. Not all my clients are exactly…good risks.'