The Company She Kept (8 page)

‘What was she really like?' he asked in a final attempt to fill out the picture. ‘It always helps to know what sort of person –'

‘I'm sorry, that really is more than I feel able to cope with just yet. You'll have to give me time. Later, perhaps ...'

‘I understand.'

Her distress was evident, perhaps through fear of letting emotion get the better of her again, and Mayo felt that any more questioning was likely to be counter-productive. They were only ferreting around at this stage for anything they could pick up that might be of use. More relevant questions could come later, if necessary.

She took leave of them at the door, already shrugging on her coat again and exclaiming at the time, ‘I must get on!'

‘You've had a shock,' Mayo said. ‘Couldn't you get one of your partners to take your calls today?'

‘Good heavens, that won't be necessary, I'm far too busy!' She added wanly, ‘And mooning around being miserable isn't likely to bring Angie back to life, is it?'

‘Well, take my advice, and don't overdo it.'

In his sympathy for her, he'd forgotten he was talking to a doctor and she managed a smile. ‘And if you'll take
my
advice, you'll go home and get a few hours' sleep, yourself. You look as though you could do with it.'

The house had come alive again now that Sophie was home. All the rooms were in use again, not merely the kitchen. Fresh flowers filled the vases, the elusive scent she used lingered everywhere. (Maggie had heard she had the scent specially made for her in Paris – or perhaps it was New York – and had no difficulty in believing it.) She ordered delicious and expensive food, nibbling at minute portions and leaving the rest for Maggie, for Sophie ate less than a mouse.

Maggie wasn't grumbling. Her student days weren't long behind; she was always short of money, and lobster and fillet steak were a decided improvement on baked beans and beefburgers.

‘I suppose you want me to pack up and go, now that I've finished my house-sitting stint,' she said.

‘Now, darling, don't be tiresome. You know you can stay as long as you want. Anyway, I don't think I shall be here all that long. It's always so cold in England.'

‘The thermostat's up to eighty! I don't know how you can stand it!'

‘Well, hie thee off to an attic, it's cold enough up there, and get on with your painting. I've held you up long enough this morning.'

‘True,' said Maggie, with a laugh, disappearing in a gust of energy to immerse herself in one of the large and violent abstracts which Sophie could never understand, while she herself, thin and elegant in her dress of fine soft wool, the colour of aubergines, drew her chair up to the desk near the fire to read her post, shivering in an exaggerated manner at imaginary draughts. But she loved England more every time she returned to it, realizing how much she missed this house where she'd been born. It was a small Queen Anne gem of a house on what had once been the village green at Pennybridge, its light, square rooms perfectly proportioned, the pale honey-coloured walls setting off her collection of gold-framed Baxter prints, the gathering together of which had become something of an obsession over the years.

Perhaps this time she'd stay. Perhaps it was time to stop running away. Sometimes recently she'd found herself in some part of Europe or America with no memory of why she'd decided on that particular place, and little idea of how she'd ever got there. She'd achieved the freedom she had so longed for at eighteen, and found by bitter experience that this meant she couldn't bear to tie herself down to anyone or anything. Now there was nothing and no one who really mattered – unless it was Roz, and young Michael. And also, perhaps ... But deliberately, and now by habit, she switched her mind away from subjects that were unremittingly painful.

‘Do you still write?' Felix had asked her last night, sitting opposite her in the firelit room, under the golden light of the lamps, while she sat curled up on the pale Chinese carpet, her legs folded beneath her, her hands held out to the glowing coals. They were simulated coals but they gave an illusion of warmth and the gas flames were real enough. After a long time she'd said no.

‘Why not, Sophie? You had such hopes –'

‘We all did. We were young, we believed ourselves capable of anything.'

‘
But you were never a real writer,
' Tommo had said the last time she saw him, ‘
and never will be.
' His outspokenness, not having softened with the years, had initially enraged her but, thinking about it later, she had been forced to acknowledge that he might well be right, though it was painful to accept: she didn't have the passion, the determination to slog on that Maggie had, for instance, young as she was. Yet she had found compensations, other things she could do: she had discovered in herself an unexpected acuity in financial matters so that now she managed not only her own affairs but, ironically, Roz's as well.

Felix hadn't pressed the point. ‘I went to Flowerdew before I came here,' he said abruptly, shocking her, though it was a logical enough follow-on from his previous remarks.

‘What? You didn't!' Sophie knew that her eyes were startled, frightened, as she raised them to meet his unblinking stare.

‘It was a mistake'.

She had caught the echoes of fear in her own voice and controlled it as best she could as she answered lightly, ‘Well, it always is a mistake to go back, they say, don't they?' In his case, she would have thought, an act of unprecedented folly. Her heart had begun to bang. Horrified at what his return might mean, she tried to change the subject, to ask him about his present life, his marriage, his work, but he interrupted her.

‘Don't you ever think about Flowerdew, and Kitty – about what happened, Sophie?'

‘No!'

‘Doesn't it ever weigh on your conscience?'

‘I don't let it,' she said evenly.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure! I don't see any reason for tormenting myself with something that's over and done with. We swore we would forget it.' And she had, with that strength of purpose she could always summon when she needed it. She had locked it away in a dark cupboard at the back of her mind and told herself that she had thrown the key away. It was the only way she could have coped. ‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘But I do. We must.'

‘Felix –' she began.

‘No, you have to listen.'

The words fell like sharp marble chips, his eyes were that icy pale blue they always used to be when he was angry.

Fourteen years ago he had imagined himself in love with her and had tried to persuade her that she was in love with him. It would have been easy enough to go along with that – he'd been very attractive in a confident, self-aware fashion, as intent on finding an identity for himself as she had been, though quite differently. His hadn't then been the successful, smart image he projected now, but he was working on it even then – short hair, high collars and tailored suits when everyone else of his generation was long-haired and wearing jeans and T-shirts; the affectation of writing his forename with an acute accent, his surname with an apostrophe between the D and the a, pretending he had French ancestry. Félix D'Arbell. Like Tess Durbeyfield, Miss D'Urberville. Perhaps he still wrote it that way.

But, quite apart from the ever-present fact of Tommo that had begun to dominate her life, she'd never liked the ambition that drove him, the ruthlessness that he would certainly need to get to the top. She had always felt alarmed by his temper, which could explode into a sudden rage. She knew now that she'd been right not to let him persuade her, even though the years had changed him somewhat. He was more in control, less inclined to let his feelings get the better of him. All the same, she would never make the mistake of underestimating him.

‘Have you contacted the others?' she asked.

‘No.'

‘Why me?' He didn't answer. ‘Why have you really come back, Felix, after all this time?'

‘Don't you know? Are you really telling me you don't know?'

And Sophie, to her chagrin, found herself trembling and quite unable to meet his cold, challenging stare.

Angie Robinson had been only one of the growing number of women in Lavenstock who for one reason or another lived alone. Many of them had drifted like shifting sand into the district around the bypass, where affordable accommodation was still to be found – affordable largely on account of its being so run down. The noise, Mayo supposed, must have made its own contribution; rarely was it quiet, day or night. Cars, lorries and buses ground along, stopped and started at the traffic lights, changed gear and gunned engines ceaselessly. Run down and noisy, with two rows of identical houses facing each other, on-street parking jamming it from end to end, Bulstrode Street escaped neither condition.

Atkins had already started the process of rounding up the pathetic bunch of known prowlers, Peeping Toms, sexual deviants of all kinds who were known to frequent the area – twenty-eight to date, and more to come – and though there was always the chance that one of them might prove to be the killer, Mayo was increasingly less hopeful that this would be the case. They were a sorry lot. Some had access to a car in which the body might have been transported away from the scene of the crime, others probably had the nous to think of taking it away. Not many had both.

Having decided there was time for a quick look round Angie Robinson's flat before the PM, Mayo, accompanied by Abigail Moon, let himself in with the key Angie had given Madeleine Freeman for emergencies. The flat proved to be an upstairs one, really only the bedroom floor of the house, having its own access by means of a door at the bottom of a flight of exceedingly narrow stairs. The whole place had evidently been recently redecorated and the smell of paint still lingered. Dead white paint, no doubt in an effort to lighten the gloom, but the effect was about as welcoming as a cold bath on a winter morning, an icy white contained silence in contrast with the distant grinding traffic noise outside.

‘Not exactly home from home, is it?'

Mayo stood in the front room with his hands in his pockets, getting the feel of the place, not knowing what it was about this particular flat that should make him take such an instant and intense dislike to it ... he'd seen many far, far worse. It was clean and more than adequate for one person: really nothing to take exception to ... except there was no warmth, it possessed not even a modicum of individuality, the general clutter of well-loved possessions that characterizes almost every human life.

The sitting-room contained nothing but a couple of easy chairs and a laminated coffee table still smelling of its factory finish, dumped in the middle of a dreary beige carpet. A packing case or two was pushed against the walls, and that was it. Not even a few bookshelves, houseplants or a television set: but in the centre of the coffee table was a half-full whisky bottle and a used glass. Poor Angie Robinson. So this was where she'd arrived. Drinking alone in this chilling apartment.

‘Looks as though she was only just getting round to the finishing touches,' Abigail remarked, but he saw his own feelings mirrored in the tiny shiver of distaste. ‘Not making much headway, was she, to say she's been here six weeks?'

This was patently true. The packing cases had been opened but not yet emptied. Lifting their lids, a pile of cushions was revealed stuffed into one, and another appeared to be full of ornaments and knick-knacks. Several pictures leant against the wall. A chain-store print of a striped tiger had already been hung, but the X-hooks, hammer, picture cord and scissors for fixing the rest had been abandoned on the floor beneath it.

First appearances didn't suggest that any sort of struggle had taken place here. If there were any hidden traces, any tell-tale signs of anyone else's presence, they wouldn't remain hidden for long, for Dexter and his SOCO team were due to move in and it was Dexter's unshakable theory that nobody could kill without leaving some telltale signs and that he could, moreover, find an eyelash in a sandstorm. Before the team arrived to do the necessary detailed work, however, a preliminary look around was indicated.

‘Let's get started.' Mayo decided to begin with the kitchen and bathroom, leaving the bedroom to Abigail. ‘You know what to look for – basically, anything that strikes you.'

At least Angie had tried to make the bedroom more welcoming. Although it, too, was painted in the same uninspired white as the rest of the flat, there were some flowery, pastel peach curtains, with duvet cover and pillow-cases to match, which did have some sort of softening effect.

Abigail began with the dressing-table, hands encased in thin plastic gloves, doing her best not to make value judgements – but wow! the woman hadn't stinted herself, had she? She blinked, viewing the array of high-priced bottles and jars of cosmetics, lotions, powders and scents spread over the polished surface. How could anyone bring themselves to spend that much on make-up? Then, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her shining bronze plait and a clear, glowing skin that owed little to artifice, she felt suddenly less inclined to criticize, recalling that livid birthmark Angie Robinson had gone through life bearing on her face. But she couldn't stop her eyebrows rising even further when she opened the drawers and saw the piles of seductive underwear, the slips and briefs in pure silk, the satin cami-knickers, the lacy bras. Hm. And the wardrobe, crammed with attention-grabbing clothes that all the same didn't come cheap. And more shoes than Imelda Marcos, all of them frivolous and impractical.

Abigail might not admire Angie's taste but she couldn't fault the care she'd taken of her things. Clothes on hangers. Shoes on trees. No drawers full of laddered tights, no dirty underwear hanging around, no gooey make-up jars. But the clutter in the brown leather shoulder-bag which she picked up off the bed was like everyone else's. She tipped the whole lot out on to the bed: keys, wallet, coin-purse and diary, a couple of used tissues, several one pence pieces, till receipts and screwed-up shopping-lists. Straightening out one of these, she stared at it with mounting excitement, then went to find Mayo.