crap. He tried to make it look like suicide, didn’t he? Fucking weird way to do it, if you ask me. But he’s a scary guy, underneath that smooth suit. I reckon he wanted her to suffer, and for her to know that. And he’s smart and rich. You won’t catch him easily.’
‘What about Tony da Silva? You know him too, don’t you?’
‘Her tutor? Yeah, he contacted me, trying to find out where Marion had moved to. Said it was urgent academic business. Oh yeah, sure.’ He pulled a face.
‘What do you think it was?’
‘Well, he fancied her, didn’t he? And she wasn’t having any.’
‘So maybe he killed her.’
‘Nah. Doesn’t have the balls. And he didn’t know where she lived. Not until afterwards.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I told him eventually, after she was dead.’
‘Yes, he said you gave him a key. Is that right?’
‘Not so as I’d admit it. He phoned me at the weekend, wanting me to tell you, confirm it was after she died. I said forget it.’
‘Of course he could just be using you to disguise the fact that he did know where she lived.’
Rafferty thought about that, then shook his head.
Kathy gathered up the photos. ‘If we can’t identify these I’ll get you to come in to look at some mugshots. Assuming this isn’t just some bloke going for a drink.’
She got to her feet and walked out.
•
When she got back to the office she tried without success to find a match for the man in the photographs. In the end she sent them off to technical support to have them enhanced, and by the next morning she had a reasonably clear large image of his face pinned up on the board, still none the wiser as to his identity. None of the others recognised him, until Bren came in, sniffling and red-nosed, sucking throat lozenges.
‘What’s Harry been up to then?’ he rasped as he passed the picture.
‘You know him?’ Kathy asked. ‘I haven’t been able to find him in records.’
‘He’s not a crook, he’s a cop, or used to be. DS Harry Sykes, retired about four years ago.’
‘Know what he does now?’
‘I can probably find out.’
After making a couple of phone calls he came back with the information that Sykes was now working for a West End brokerage by the name of Mallory Capital. twenty-eight
T he prince closed the file with a sigh. It had a very smart cover, gold embossed, which he liked, but the contents were impenetrable-bear spreads, cliquets, vanilla options-what did he know of such things? He just wanted to spend the bloody money. ‘Might one smoke, Douglas? One never can tell these days.’
‘Of course, Ricky. I’ll get you an ashtray.’
As he passed the window Warrender glanced down into the street and saw a police car double-parked outside the front door. He gave a little frown, then noticed a solitary man in the central gardens of the square. The figure was clad in a long black coat, with a shock of white hair at its head, and was standing motionless, apparently looking straight up at him. Then the man took a hand from his overcoat pocket and lifted it to his ear. Almost immediately, as if by magic, he heard a telephone begin to ring in the outer office. When the buzzer sounded on his desk, Warrender was almost expecting it.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Warrender, only it’s the police. They say it’s urgent. A Detective Chief Inspector Brock. I tried to tell him…’
‘It’s all right, Carol. I’ll speak to him. And get Harry to bring the car round to the front, will you?’
‘I’m not sure I can. The girls downstairs just told me that he’s been arrested.’
‘What’s an iron butterfly again, Douglas?’ There was more than a hint of frustration in the prince’s voice.
‘It’s the four-option strategy, Ricky, with three consecutively higher strike prices and a long or short straddle in the middle. Look, I might get Jason to come and talk you through the technical steps again, okay?’
‘It’s just that Daddy will expect me to know what it’s all about,’ the prince grumbled.
‘Of course. Just excuse me one moment.’
He went out and spoke to his secretary, then took the call at her desk. ‘Hello? Warrender here.’
‘DCI Brock, Mr Warrender. I need to talk to you, concerning Marion Summers’ death.’
‘Yes, well… later this afternoon perhaps.’
‘This won’t wait. I’m outside in the square. We can talk here if you wish, or go up to West End Central.’
When Warrender crossed the street into the gardens he saw that Brock had seated himself on the bench near the statue, where, he knew, Marion had taken her lunch, fifteen days before.
‘Did she always choose this seat?’ Brock asked.
‘Unless someone else got here first.’
‘So that you could see her, from your office?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you might have looked out and watched her sip the poisoned drink.’
‘Except that I was in Corsica that day, and she knew it.’
‘Did you arrange to have it done?’
‘Certainly not. Is that why you’ve arrested my driver?’
‘He’s not under arrest. He’s helping us with our inquiries. We have a witness who claims that he tried to obtain arsenic on your behalf.’
‘What? That’s absolute rubbish. What witness?’
‘The witness has also suggested that your relationship with Marion had become impossible, her demands too great.’
‘Well,’ Warrender replied coolly, ‘that just shows how ill-informed your so-called witness is.’
‘All the same, it happened at a time when you were faced with a major disruption in your life, weren’t you? Were you really ready for the rupture it would cause, with your wife, your daughter, perhaps your mother? The loss of the house you’ve shared with them all those years? The gossip in your professional circles? Were you ready for all that? To take on a child again, mewling and puking and keeping you awake half the night?’
‘You sound as if you’re talking from experience. I have one very considerable advantage over my first efforts to start a family-I can now afford to outsource most of the difficulties. Marion made me feel thirty years younger. I looked forward to it as the start of a new life.’
Brock was watching Warrender carefully all through this, measuring his answers, trying to gauge his credibility.
‘Weren’t you just a little concerned by that-how shall I put it?-that rather obsessive side of Marion’s character? Her ruthless need to be recognised, at all costs?’
‘You’re speculating. You didn’t know her. Look, didn’t you read the contents of the memory stick I gave your inspector at the weekend? If you’re that desperate for a culprit, there are a few clues there, I should have thought.’
‘Yes, but apparently you didn’t give us the original memory stick that belonged to Marion. According to our experts, each of the items has been recorded onto its memory within the last week, and we can’t be sure when they were originally written, or by whom. The whole thing could be a fabrication, made for the purpose of feeding us false leads, which, as you say, point away from you.’
Warrender sucked in his breath. ‘The original contained some other things, intimate things, that I wasn’t prepared to show you. I thought that even if I deleted them your people might be able to retrieve them. I couldn’t risk that, and so I transferred the items I was prepared to share with you to a new stick and destroyed the old one. But the entries are all genuine, believe me. And as far as I can see they point in only one conceivable direction-her tutor, da Silva. Rereading those letters, those notes of hers, I feel very angry now that I didn’t see the signs; her instinctive revulsion towards him, the way he attempted to pursue her, and how she fell ill and lost the baby after finally agreeing to see him.’
Warrender sat on the edge of the bench, fists clenched, and his voice dropped. ‘And most of all, the way she was killed. Arsenic, for God’s sake! Don’t you find that just too damn symbolic and… and. .. anachronistic for
