Running Scared (23 page)

‘We made up our minds to do this, Tig, you and I. You asked me to go to Dorridge and I said I would. Neither of us is going to welsh, right? It’s a pact. I’m going there on Sunday, and you’re going to wait here until I come back. No one’s saying this’ll be easy, but it’s like you said. It’s your one chance. Don’t muff it. Don’t just duck out and run.’

She looked at me miserably through the curtain of hair. ‘All right. I’ll stay. But you’ll have to tell them the truth, Fran. You’ll have to tell them everything.’

‘Sure,’ I said encouragingly. It was all right promising. How I was going to manage that interview, I hadn’t the slightest idea. In the meantime, however, I had other fish to fry.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’re going out.’

‘Where?’ She was immediately suspicious again.

Putney. We’re going to do a bit of investigating. I want to know what’s going on and there’s only one way I’m going to find out and that’s by doing it myself. Just wait here a tick while I nip up and ask Daphne to let me take a look at her A–Z.’

‘You leave me out of this, whatever it is!’ Tig burst out. ‘You start going out there and pestering this woman he was talking about, the one who had a break-in, and you’ll have all the coppers you want round here. But you won’t have me! I don’t know what you’re into, but you’re not involving me, right?’

‘Take it easy. I won’t involve you. I’ll have to go and see this Mrs Joanna Stevens on my own. She’d be worried if two of us turned up. All I want is for you to come out to Putney with me, and hang around while I call on her. I’m not leaving you here on your own, Tig. You’ll start brooding about going home and get into a state – and before you accuse
me
of not trusting
you
, let me tell you, that’s not it. I just think you’re better not left alone this afternoon. We’ll leave Bonnie in charge of the flat.’

Chapter Twelve

We got out to Putney and found Shaker Lane all right. That was no problem. But I did have two other problems to deal with, before I ever got near Mrs Stevens. One was that the early dusk meant light was already fading by the time we got there. That worried me. I didn’t want to knock on Mrs Stevens’ door in the dark. She might be even more unwilling to let me in than I anticipated she’d be anyway. The other problem was Tig, who grumbled and threatened to desert all the way there. I wouldn’t have brought her along if I could have safely left her back at the flat in the mood she was in. However, when we actually reached Shaker Lane, she bucked up a bit and started to get interested.

‘This is it, then?’ She looked up and down the road. The word ‘lane’ was a misnomer. Probably there had been a lane there once, donkey’s years ago, but any trace of a rural path had disappeared. The road was as Harford had described it: prosperous. The houses pretty well all answered the description of Mrs Stevens’ he’d given me. I wondered which was hers. ‘What are you going to do now?’ Tig asked.

Good question. ‘Come on, Tig,’ I said. ‘Back to that little shopping precinct.’

The precinct in question wasn’t much more than a row of shops and a paved area with a couple of wooden seats around a depressed-looking tree. It lay off the bottom end of Shaker Lane and we’d walked through it on our way there. I’d noticed, as we did, that it contained a florist’s.

‘They cost a lot of money,’ said Tig, as we stood outside the shop, surveying the bunches of blooms in buckets. ‘You could go inside and distract the assistant and I’ll nick bunch, if that’s what you want.’

‘It’s not what I want!’ I said firmly. ‘I thought you wanted to stay out of trouble, Tig? You’ve got a funny way of going about it. We’ll both go in.’

‘I want some flowers to take to a lady who’s bereaved,’ I told the assistant. ‘Only I haven’t got much dosh. What can you let me have?’

The girl cast an eye over me and nothing she saw disproved my claim to be broke. ‘Someone round here, is it?’ she asked.

‘A Mrs Stevens. She lives in Shaker Lane.’

‘Oh, right!’ She brightened. ‘Several people have been in buying flowers for her. Her brother, wasn’t it? He got knifed. Horrible, only it didn’t happen around here, thank goodness.’ She stared at us with increased curiosity.

‘That’s right,’ I said, not parting with any more info, something which clearly disappointed her. ‘So, what have you got?’

‘Well, we’ve sold quite a lot, like I said, on account of her,’ said the girl. ‘And it’s getting late in the day. You can have any of that lot, half price.’

I said fair enough, and parted with the cash for two bunches of freesias and some ferny stuff. They smelled nice and when I put them all together, they looked a lot.

‘You don’t know what number her house is, do you?’ I asked. ‘I had it written down but I left the bit of paper at home.’

‘Hang on,’ she said, going to the counter and opening a ledger. ‘It’ll be in the order book. She came in asking about wreaths. Yes, here it is, number fifteen.’

‘See?’ I said to Tig, as we left the shop. ‘All you’ve got to do is haggle a bit. You don’t have to nick ’em. And I found out the number of the house as well. That’s being a detective.’

‘They’ve got loads of them,’ said Tig. ‘They wouldn’t have missed them. You could’ve gone in asking about the house number while I pinched some.’

It occurred to me that, if and when Tig got home to Dorridge, rehabilitating her was going to be a job and a half. Thankfully, it wouldn’t be mine.

‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘Sit on one of those benches. I won’t be long.’ If Mrs Stevens wasn’t at home, or if she shut the door in my face, I’d be very quick.

It was darker by the time I got back to number fifteen, but someone had switched on a light downstairs, so I was in luck there. I rang the doorbell.

After a few minutes, it opened on the chain. I could just make out a woman’s face, pressed against the crack. ‘Yes?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Mrs Stevens? I’ve brought some flowers.’

‘Oh, wait a tick.’ She pushed the door to. I heard her unhook the safety chain. It reopened and I could see her properly in the hall light.

I judged her quite a bit older than her brother, a stocky woman of middle height with greying hair cut short and glasses. She reached out a hand for the flowers. ‘Is there a card?’ she asked.

‘I’m not delivering them from a florist’s,’ I explained, hanging on to the bunch. ‘They’re from me personally. My name’s Fran Varady. I – I knew your brother slightly.’

‘Oh?’ She hesitated, looking me up and down. ‘Well, you’d better come in, then.’

That got me over the doorstep. I handed over my flowers in the hall. She thanked me and murmured something about just putting them in the sink for a moment. Then she disappeared into, presumably, the kitchen. I looked around. It was all very neat and tidy. The cloakroom, in which the incriminating loo seat was to be found, was off to my left. To my right I could see, through an open door, a comfortable sitting room.

Mrs Stevens returned and ushered me in. We took facing armchairs and studied one another. She was wearing a dark green dress with a cowl collar which did nothing for her, but was presumably a sign of mourning. She wasn’t in any way remarkable – a middle-aged woman like thousands of others –and that a close relative should have been knifed in my basement seemed incongruous. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to break that bit of news to her, about it being my basement, or even if I should.

She spoke first. ‘Are you a journalist?’ When I denied this, she went on, ‘Because my brother, being freelance, knew a lot of press people. I thought you might be one of them, a reporter or something.’

I supposed I did look disreputable enough to represent one of the more downmarket tabloids. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘whether to call him Graeme or Gray.’

‘His name was really Graeme, of course, but he’s – he was always called Gray, right from childhood.’ She faltered slightly.

Feeling bad, I told her sincerely that I was very sorry for her loss.

‘I’m sure he always took unnecessary risks,’ she said. ‘He was always the same, even as a boy. There was a twelve-year age gap between us so I was the older sister who had to keep an eye on him. He arrived rather late in my parents’ marriage and they found him a handful. He was always better with me. Giving him a home here seemed natural. Although he was hardly ever here.’ She paused. ‘May I ask how you know Gray, if you’re not a journalist?’

‘He came into the shop where I work a little while ago. He sent a note saying he wanted to see me again – but –’ I searched desperately for the words, but she made the connection.

‘Are you the girl he was trying to see, when he – when he was killed?’ She leaned forward.

I admitted it and decided to throw myself on her mercy. ‘Look, Mrs Stevens, I’m really sorry to bother you. I don’t know why such a dreadful thing happened to Gray. I don’t know what sort of thing he’d got into, but whatever it was, I think it may affect me. In fact, I’m sure of it. I know your house was broken into last night. Someone tried to get into my flat last night, too, only I had a dog in the place and the intruder was scared off.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ she said, then, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

I thought of Tig hanging about in the cold down at the shopping precinct. But the offer of tea meant Mrs Stevens was prepared to talk. I accepted.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said, when she’d brought the teatray, ‘I really know nothing either. Gray didn’t confide in me. I told the police all this because they were asking, too. He used to go on trips a lot, but often didn’t say where he’d been. Sometimes he’d let me know when he was coming home and sometimes he’d just turn up. He was like that. I realise – I realise that this time he must have been doing something dangerous.’ She paused and looked down at the cup and saucer she held on her lap. ‘The police asked if anything had been taken from his room, but I had to tell them, I’d no idea. I didn’t know what Gray kept up there. When I first called the police – the local police – they didn’t want to believe I’d had a break-in. They said the place was all too tidy and nothing was missing. I told them, tidy maybe, but not tidy enough! Then there was the downstairs toilet. He’d used it, I know, because he left the seat up. Do you know,’ she was getting heated at the memory, ‘the young policeman who came actually laughed when I told him that!’

‘I believe it,’ I said.

‘I told him, I didn’t think it was funny. Someone had definitely been in my house! Anyway, I could sense it, if you know what I mean. I just felt someone had been in while I’d been out. I still don’t think they’d have taken me seriously if I hadn’t told them about Gray’s death. Then they got on to the other police – the ones investigating Gray’s murder. They came out here and they were very sympathetic.’

‘When did Gray come home this time? Had he been away long?’ I asked.

‘He’d been away about a month. Quite early on, he sent me a postcard from Switzerland, from Zurich. After that I didn’t hear a thing until he turned up in his usual way, just a week before he died. I had a phone call from the station half an hour before he arrived to let me know he was on his way. I just had time to go up and make up his bed. He was very suntanned. I asked if he’d been skiing or something like that in Switzerland. He said, “I’ll tell you—”’ She broke off and fumbled for a handkerchief. ‘He said, “I’ll tell you all about it one day, Jo!” and that was all he said.’

I waited while she dabbed at her eyes and nose. ‘I hate doing this,’ I told her, ‘but can I just ask, did he seem different in any way when he came home this time?’

She considered this as she tucked away the handkerchief. ‘I must say, he did seem pleased with himself. But one morning he smartened himself up – because to be frank, he was a very untidy dresser – and said he was going to have lunch with a contact, he called it. When he came back,’ she paled at the memory, ‘he had a dreadful black eye! I asked what on earth had happened. He said, he’d tripped getting out of a car and hit his head on the kerb. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.’

I reflected that Gray Coverdale had been a practised liar. He knew to put an element of fact in his story, in this case, his abrupt exit from the Mercedes. Even a smidgen of truth adds confidence to the liar’s voice, and it’s always difficult to disprove a story that’s partly true. I wondered what sort of journalism he’d gone in for. The sort that tracked down MPs in secret lovenests and interviewed the partners of men who’d been convicted of lurid crimes, I suspected. It all made sense. I was willing to bet he’d been following up some kind of dodgy story – only this time his luck had run out.

‘I’d better go,’ I said. ‘A friend’s waiting for me. I’m truly sorry about your brother. I expect the police will get it sorted soon.’ I didn’t believe any such thing, but you’ve got to say it. ‘Would you mind,’ I went on, ‘not mentioning my visit to you to the police? They’re sort of fussy.’