02 Blue Murder (23 page)

“
Unduly,” Bhar muttered.
“So. Back to the party. You said the point was cocaine. Are you
telling me Emmeline Wardle was the dealer?”

“
Not really. That would be
too much like getting her hands dirty. But Em provided the venue
and took a cut. That’s what I hear.” Tossing her ponytail, Phoebe
gave her pregnant belly another pat. “Sorry. Hormones make me so
foggy. Can’t remember who said it.”

“
Of course not.” Bhar
studied the young woman’s face for as long as he dared. Was she as
straightforward as she seemed? Or perfectly, brilliantly
manipulative? And was a man who’d been taken in by Tessa Chilcott
capable of discerning the difference? “Is it safe to say, when
Emmeline sent me to interview you, she thought you didn’t know
about her method of earning extra income?”

“
Nope. Everyone who went to
the party knew she’d teamed up with one dealer or other,” Phoebe
said. “Em just assumed I wouldn’t dare mention it to you. But I’ve
had to put up with Em since she was eight years old. Every school I
attended, every summer camp, every birthday party, she was always
there, throwing a tantrum and getting her way. Now her day in the
sun is almost over. Once I have full access to my trust fund, I’ll
be able to buy and sell her.”

“
Will you?” Though Bhar had
made a few enemies at the Met, he doubted he’d ever find himself in
such a position. “Buy and sell Emmeline Wardle, I mean?”

“
I don’t know.” Phoebe
unscrewed the silver ball to apply a fresh coat of lip balm. “We
never know what money will do to us until we hold the cash in
hand.”

***

W
hen Bhar arrived home that evening, an empty pint of cookie
dough ice cream lay in the rubbish bin. Calm and composed, Sharada
made him dinner with a minimum of conversation, staring into space
while he worked his way through yellow rice, butter chicken and
aloo mutter. A less attuned son might fear Sharada was still
obsessing over the rift with her Facebook writers’ group, but Bhar
knew that blank, dreamy look all too well. His mum was going
through the motions of dinner with him because she felt it was her
duty. As soon as he finished and the dishes were cleared, she
headed to the computer to begin typing up whatever was happening
behind those long-lashed black eyes.

After an hour trying to locate something
bearable to watch on television, Bhar regretted properly
outsourcing Phoebe Paquette’s accusations to the detective
inspector in charge of the case’s Incident Room. Several tasks had
been logged in the case’s Action Book:

Determine ownership of the white “Euro
Disney” mansion in Holland Park;

Evaluate the financial viability of Mr.
Wardle’s frozen foods company;

Locate Kyla Sloane’s original birth
certificate;

Confirm or deny any relationship between
Kyla Sloan and Tessa Chilcott.

Bhar possessed the detective skills,
computer access and tenacity to accomplish all those tasks himself.
But Hetheridge preferred for his detectives to focus on the big
picture while letting subordinates check and double-check the
details.

That didn’t mean Bhar couldn’t securely log
into his New Scotland Yard workstation from home and check for new
developments. Emmeline Wardle’s urinalysis was back. Not
surprisingly, the test was positive for both alcohol and cocaine.
Phoebe Paquette had been truthful about that particular detail,
even if all the rest was still in doubt.

Bhar scrolled through the rest of the
witness list, looking at photographs until he found the one he
sought. Kyla Sloane. Yes, she was pretty—exactly his type. Once
upon a time, Tessa Chilcott had been much like Kyla. Not in that
society-page photo with the newly acquitted Sir Duncan by her side,
looking wan and fragile. And certainly not in her mug shot, with
matted hair and staring eyes. But the very first time Bhar met
Tessa, at a New Year’s party packed with people he didn’t know,
Tessa had been like Kyla: lovely, fresh and hopeful.

Dateless and determined to ring in the New
Year in possession of at least one phone number, Bhar had
approached Tessa—slender and elegant, with long-lashed eyes and a
cloud of dark curls. She was looking down at her feet, fidgeting
inside a pair of shoes with pointed toes and tall heels. As Bhar
watched, Tessa kept trying to reposition herself, searching for a
more comfortable way to stand. Finally she looked up, saw him
watching her and stopped fidgeting, smiling so beautifully he was
left speechless.

“
Funny about my feet. They
just won’t fit these shoes.”

“
Well. Um. Er.” Bhar had
cleared his throat. “Surely it’s the other way round? Shouldn’t
your shoes fit your feet?”

“
D’you think?” Tessa
regarded him doubtfully. “The size is right, and they come very
highly recommended. But my feet are wrong somehow.”

Three months after that first meeting, Bhar
had expected to marry Tessa. He knew she was elusive, changeable,
never quite within his reach. But he’d been certain he could win
her over, make her his own, make her happy. And he’d gone on
believing that until the day she rang him to say she loved Sir
Duncan Godington and was returning to his side.

“
I’m sorry,” Tessa had wept,
voice so distorted he’d known her tears were genuine. “You’re so
kind. So perfect. I can’t be with you. I just can’t.”

Fourteen months after that first meeting,
Bhar had tried, unbeknownst to Sharada or anyone else, to visit
Tessa at Parkwood. Ward sisters had escorted her into the visiting
room. Gaze downcast and hair scraped back in a bun, Tessa had been
dressed in a soft track suit without zippers or buttons. As her
eyes lifted, Bhar put on the smile he’d practiced before the
mirror.

Tessa screamed. Not his name, nothing but
“No!” over and over again. Blundering backward, stumbling over the
plain institution-style table and chairs, Tessa had cowered in a
corner until the ward sisters successfully dragged her away. The
same thing happened on his second and final visit. Bhar had left
uncertain if Tessa rejected him personally, or simply fled an
unknown visitor in her deranged state. He never decided which
interpretation he preferred.

In those days, Bhar’s disgrace at the Yard
and the very real threat of dismissal—the series of simple-minded
assignments, the daily gauntlet of cold shoulders and contempt—had
been a blessing. If the Bhar family had incorporated any British
adage into its DNA, it was “Keep calm and carry on.” His father,
rocked by midlife disillusionment, had carried on with his mistress
into a brand new life. His mum, humiliated and frightened by her
husband’s defection, had carried on into a modest but highly
satisfying career. And Bhar, golden in both his didactics and his
field performance, had fallen so low he’d been forced to decide.
Sweep up the last bits of his dignity and bugger off to a different
branch of the civil service—or swallow his pride, take his lumps
and carry on.

That was a key difference between him and DS
Kate Wakefield. He knew enough of her history, despite her rather
secretive nature, to guess she had stumbled into police work. A
more typical life course for a woman with her upbringing was to
leave school early, have a baby or two and settle down to a life of
telly and the dole. Instead, Kate had confounded the entire
sociologic blueprint of her existence. After their last case, even
the Met’s Jurassic top brass had begun seeing Kate as a hot
property. By contrast, Bhar was a has-been, a former up-and-comer
who’d torpedoed his own career out of naiveté and a wild desire to
impress the woman he loved.

Bhar blinked at his computer monitor. He
wasn’t looking at Tessa Chilcott. No. This was Kyla Sloane—dark and
delicately pretty, but with a sharpness to those fine eyes that
Tessa had always lacked. His mum had worried because to her, all
young women looked alike—threats to her beloved son’s future
happiness. But Kyla wasn’t really so much like Tessa. Kyla had the
air of a survivor. And besides—Bhar had evolved beyond his early
preferences. When he finally settled down, his bride would possess
the perfect combination of looks, sexual combustibility and cash.
And if he never hit on such a trifecta of feminine perfection, he
was content to spend the rest of his life rebuilding his
career.

He had logged out of his Met workstation and
drifted over to an Internet gaming site—he was quite good at video
poker—when his mobile rang. It was DI Owen Wasserman, weekend
manager of the French-Parsons incident room.

“
On a date, Paulie, my lad?”
Wasserman always sounded cheery.

“
Of course. Having it off
with Stella Artois and my right hand. Wotcha?”

“
You poor sick sod,”
Wasserman chuckled. “You can’t handle what I got. Tried ringing My
Lord, but he’s not answering. Harvey the manservant says he’s
‘away.’”

“
I heard he flew Mrs. Snell
to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding,” Bhar said. It was the sort of
speculation they all enjoyed about “Lady Hetheridge,” as Mrs. Snell
was unaffectionately known around the Yard.

“
Never. I heard he’s doing
the dirty with Chop-Off-Your-Bollocks Kate.”

Bhar forced a laugh. But that was a little
too close to the truth to let stand. “You’ve got it all wrong, as
usual. Our Kate’s a lesbian. Only goes for birds that look like
Posh Spice.”

“
Sure. And
you’re a poof dating blokes what look like David Beckham. Can we
get on? You want to hear this bit o’ game-changing info, or shall I
just ring
The Daily Mirror
and have done with it?”

“
Tell me.” Bhar was already
consulting his PIN generator, imputing the random passcode that
currently gave him access to his Met workstation once
again.

“
Did you know the Wardle
house on Burnaby has been sold? A rush job, but held up in court
for another day or so. Who do you think bought it?”

“
Paul McCartney.”

“
Sir
Duncan Godington,” Wasserman intoned, adding a few quiz show
dings
as if Bhar had
guessed correctly. “And did you know the Wardle house had two CC
cameras?”

“
I did. Both were mounted
about three meters up. And looked knocked about.”

“
They was. Some clever git
hit ’em with a stone or summat. The front camera gave FSS nothing
but lovely pictures o’ the constellations. Suitable for framing or
wrapping fish. But the camera in the back garden, where Clive
French died …”

“
Tell me,” Bhar said.
Something in Wasserman’s tone made the hairs on the back of his
neck rise.

“
Don’t take my word for it.
See for yourself.” Wasserman told Bhar which file to
access.

The image was digital but taken from so far
up, several key details were sacrificed. Bhar saw an indistinct
figure on the ground that had to be Clive French, right where the
police discovered him.

“
Oi! This could be gold.
Don’t hold back, Wass! Did you get pics of the murder?”

“
Nope. Out of range.
Everything this camera got came after the murder. Keep
looking.”

Not far from Clive’s corpse stood a
compressed figure with long dark hair. Bhar had little doubt it was
Kyla Sloane. That, however, was the sort of supposition unlikely to
gain purchase in a court of law. After all, no part of the female’s
face was visible.

“
Look at the bloke in the
foreground,” Wasserman said impatiently.

Bhar studied the tall man with blond, light
brown or gray hair. From the camera angle, his face was visible,
but too shadowed to identify.

“
Mystery man?”

“
Oh, ye of little faith.
Shall I apply a bit o’ facial recognition software?”

“
For all the good it will
do,” Bhar said. Most of the time, CCTV camera images were too
compromised by their height and broad scope to render the positive
ID needed for a murder case. The sort of facial geometry such
computer software relied upon—the distance between each eye,
between the top of the nose and the bow of the upper lip, etc.—was
hard-pressed to function on foreshortened, shadowed CCTV
pictures.

“
Hah!” Wasserman crowed in
Bhar’s ear. “Now who might that be, standing bold as brass at the
scene of the crime?”

Bhar bit his lip. He couldn’t say the name.
Sir Duncan Godington.

Chapter Nineteen

I
t
was too cold and windy for tea in Wellegrave House’s walled garden,
so Chief Superintendent Hetheridge’s manservant, Harvey, served
Hetheridge, Kate and Bhar in the small salon. With the curtains
drawn back, the floor-to-ceiling windows allowed the trio to take
in autumn’s last hurrah while discussing the French-Parsons case in
comfort.

“
It will take a bit of time
to officially determine whether the Wardles are as desperate for
capital as Ms. Paquette asserted,” Hetheridge said. “But
unofficially, I already have confirmation that it is true. Mr.
Wardle overextended himself during the global banking crisis and
now stands to lose everything.” Hetheridge poured himself a second
cup of tea. The silver tea service, a rather monstrous Victorian
relic from the Hetheridges of yore, was so highly polished, he
could see his own distorted reflection. When he dined alone, he
preferred his white ceramic service, purchased on holiday in Japan.
But Harvey would never dream of subjecting Hetheridge’s rare guests
to such simplicity.