‘You said someone else knew,’ Wendy said.
‘The manager, that horrible toad of a man, figured it out.’
‘He saw you with Colin Young?’
‘He saw me coming out of his room. Not that I knew at the time, and he said nothing. After that, he checked the financial records, figured out how I was hiding the theft.’
‘Blackmail?’
‘Not at the time.’
‘When?’
‘He came to me one Thursday. Colin had not been in the hotel for some time. He sat across from me in my office, with those leering eyes of his. He took hold of my arm, hurting me as he squeezed. I was frightened, unsure what to say, what to do.’
‘The man’s a pig, I’ll grant you that.’
‘He sat there, his grip getting firmer. He leant forward, his breath had the smell of alcohol. “I know all about you and your fancy man”, he said. I was frightened, not sure what to say.’
‘What happened after he had confronted you?’
‘He said nothing for a few minutes, or maybe it was seconds. I can’t remember, and then he said, “You’ve also been fiddling the books, giving the money to him, admit it.”.’
‘You’re in trouble. If he follows up on your crime, it’s prosecution, a possible custodial sentence.’
‘That’s not what he wanted.’
‘Confession’s good for the soul,’ Wendy said. ‘The full sordid details, please.’
‘He could see that I had a talent for embezzlement. He wanted me to take money for him as well.’
‘How much?’
‘Over ten thousand pounds now.’
‘Is that it?’
‘There’s more. You remember when we were sitting in the hotel café, and he came over and spoke to me?’
‘The time I told him that you were helping the police with their enquiries?’
‘It wasn’t the accounts he wanted reconciling.’
‘He’s blackmailing you for sex?’
‘That was part of the agreement, or he’d tell my husband.’
‘You agreed?’
‘What could I do? I had to have Colin under any conditions. He wouldn’t come to the hotel if I couldn’t pay for his room, and my husband is an angry man.’
A sad case, Wendy thought. A pathetic woman who had allowed feigned love to put her into intractable positions from which there was no way of extricating herself.
‘Firstly, the manager is complicit in the crime,’ Wendy said. ‘We don’t want to jeopardise you if we can avoid it. However, the man is clearly a parasite preying on the weak and stupid, and you qualify on the stupid. There was never any need for any of this to happen.’
‘That’s the full story,’ Christine Mason said.
Chapter 17
Bridget had checked out the address of the shared house where Matilda had lived, obtained a copy of the lease agreement from that time.
‘Matilda, we heard, all of us,’ Amanda Jenkins, the lessee name on the agreement, said when she and Larry met at her house in Tottenham. She was a plain-looking woman with an angular face, blue eyes, a cheery disposition. She was also very pregnant. ‘Two weeks,’ she said. The house, a two-storey semi-detached, had nothing to recommend it; the garden was neglected, and the house looked as if it could have done with a fresh coat of paint. A dog, no more than something that moved under a matted coat, took one look at Larry and resumed its sleep.
‘That’s Boris. He doesn’t do much these days. Certainly no use as a guard dog, not that we get any trouble around here,’ Amanda said. It was a good area, Larry knew that, and there was some advantage in having the worst house in the street. Those on either side were bright and renovated, and worth more than Amanda’s.
‘John, that’s my husband, he intends to fix the place up, but you know how it is.’
Indeed, Larry did. His wife was a stickler for a pristine house, the constant need to update, upgrade, repaint. She would not have appreciated the house where he now sat, although she would have loved the area.
‘Tell me about the house you shared,’ Larry said. ‘About Matilda.’
‘Did you meet Barry?’
‘Beautiful?’ Pre-empting the woman’s reply.
‘We all thought that. Although Matilda was beautiful too, in a different way.’
‘What do you mean? I’ll be honest and tell you that I don’t expect to gain too much from our conversation. Mainly because we know of their history, their childhood, their personalities, the issues that Matilda had, the effect that Barry had on women.’
‘Matilda was a lovely person. Always tidy in the house, never failed to do her chores. We rotated on the vacuuming and washing up the dishes.’
‘When it was your turn...?’
‘Failed miserably. Matilda used to cover for me, not that the others were any better. We were young, into partying, getting laid. I hope you don’t mind my bluntness.’
‘Bluntness is fine. Honesty is better. What do you think drove Matilda to commit suicide?’
‘Her brother, no one else. None of us could break that impenetrable barrier that she surrounded herself with.’
‘We’re well aware of their troubled childhood: a hard man for a father, a weak woman for a mother.’
‘He was at the house. I remember it well.’
‘Your version?’
‘An argument, harsh words spoken by the father, Barry coming to the defence of his sister, of us.’
‘The man called you whores, and his daughter no better?’
‘We made ourselves scarce, although we heard the raised voices. “Whore” came through loud and clear, but Matilda hadn’t slept around.’
‘Barry had.’
‘Yes, with me. Not that I had an issue with that, nor did Matilda. But Matilda never had a man over. We used to tease her about her being the cherry ripe for picking.’
‘Her reaction?’
‘She would just laugh, and say that in time she would find a good man
