I don’t know how long they’ll keep me in here. Hugo can bribe them for as long as he likes, I expect. I have to suffer the indignity of the group sessions, the private therapy, and everything else that you might expect - but I feel safe here. Safer than at home. In fact, if it wasn’t for one thing I would be happy to stay here. But the clock is ticking. I need a plan.
I know now without a doubt that you were right about the Rohypnol, Imo. And if I’d believed you then, what would have become of us all?
I can only say how very, very sorry I am.
With love always
Laura
***
Tom was glad of a few minutes to gather his thoughts while Laura was searching for wigs, although she appeared to be taking her time finding them. As soon as she’d left the room he’d received a frantic phone call from Annabel, regretting everything that she had told him the other day given the harsh financial impact should any of it be made public. Tom had assured her that he would treat their conversation with as much confidentiality as was possible, but he couldn’t make any promises.
After they disconnected, Tom went to sit in Becky’s place at the end of the dining room table. She’d already told him that the list of passengers on the Eurostar hadn’t revealed anything of interest, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. The sightings of the red haired lady hadn’t progressed much, as people claimed to have seen her from West Ruislip to Lewisham. But had Becky’s theory of the Eurostar been correct, she would most likely have changed tubes at Green Park to get to St Pancras, although there were other options. There were some sightings that would have correlated with this, but similarly there were others that could have her on a train from Paddington to Plymouth, and he knew he was just clutching at straws.
Becky had left her laptop here, and it was lying open. He sat staring at her screen saver and tried to gather his thoughts. He felt that he was wasting his time here in Oxfordshire. He knew that Becky was fixated on the idea of Imogen Kennedy being a serious suspect, but until he’d found out what had happened to Mirela Tinescy - the most recent charity girl to go missing - he wouldn’t rest easy. He hoped his team had made progress there. And with Jessica Armstrong - the most likely candidate to be Hugo’s mistress.
But he needed the fully rounded picture of the victim’s life that only Laura could give him, and there were so many gaps to fill in. The more he learned about Hugo, the less he liked him. So why had somebody like Laura stayed with him? He just didn’t get it at all.
Although his mind was wandering all over the place, Tom decided he’d do a bit of research to see if he could find any more about this family. Using Becky’s laptop to log onto the Internet, he typed Hugo’s full name into Google. Of course, there were bound to be a huge number of results given the events of the last few days. Tom refined and further refined his searches, merely doodling as he mulled over the facts and theories, until one headline caught his interest.
He leaned forward in his seat, all thoughts of wigs, Eastern European girls and mental illness thrust aside as he found what amounted to an unauthorised biography of Sir Hugo Fletcher. To his surprise, this included an account of Hugo’s father’s death. Although it was pretty much as Laura had said, there were a few anomalies. In fact, an open verdict was given because although a note was found, there were certain aspects of his death that were difficult to explain. Given today’s forensic expertise, Tom was sure that a more definitive conclusion would have been drawn, but it nevertheless made interesting reading.
Seeing that the name of Lady Daphne Fletcher was underlined as a hyperlink, Tom clicked through. He remembered hearing at some point that Hugo’s mother was the daughter of an Earl, so had the courtesy title of Lady, whilst his father was a plain old ‘mister’ - if a very wealthy one. Perhaps that explained why Hugo was so keen to get a title of his own. He continued to follow links until he found a site with images. Amongst these, there was one formal colour photograph of Daphne Fletcher in evening dress.
Tom clicked to enlarge the image. He stared at the screen. Not sure if his memory was playing tricks, he turned to Becky’s stash of files. Extracting a photograph, he held it next to the screen.
‘Good God,’ he whispered out loud to himself. Now he didn’t know what to think - but whichever way he looked at it, he couldn’t come up with any way of putting an acceptable spin on his discovery.
*
Stella was in the kitchen, busy making dinner for them all. She found chopping vegetables very therapeutic, and was locked in her own world when Becky returned from Annabel’s.
‘What a delicious smell, Stella!’
Stella looked up and smiled. Becky didn’t fool her with her innocent air, but she was a nice girl and just doing her job.
‘Will you be joining us for dinner, Becky?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but I don’t want to intrude so I’ve brought a sandwich with me. I’m staying at a B&B down the road so that if there are any developments I can be back with you at any time during the night.’
‘You’re not intruding at all. You’re more than welcome.’
‘Thanks, but all the same I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. Laura’s got you and Imogen for support, otherwise of course I wouldn’t leave her on her own.’
‘What about Tom? Is he still around?’
‘No. He had a phone call, and he needed to get back. I saw him for just a couple of minutes before he left. Something’s come up. I’m waiting to have a quick word with Laura to explain why he’s gone, and then I’ll get off too. I gather she was in the middle of answering some questions for him, but I’m sure they’ll wait. She’s lucky to have you looking after her and making sure she eats properly.’
‘Well, Laura’s a really good cook herself so I can’t just serve up a plate of egg and chips. Anyway, she needs to get her stamina back. She wasn’t always so thin, you know. She used to be really curvaceous. Laura Kennedy and Imogen Dubois - they were every young boy’s dream at one time. They could just pick and choose. But Will was always the one for our Imogen.’
Stella continued to chatter, but looking at Becky’s face she could see that she was miles away and was looking distinctly preoccupied. Given that it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with whatever she’d been saying, she left Becky to her thoughts, and continued preparing the meal.
***
The girl no longer kept watch from the window. Her strength was fading fast. She’d started to ration her water days ago, but now it was nearly gone. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten anything, and her thin body had precious few reserves to draw on.
She couldn’t believe he had left her for so long. He’d said he was going to teach her a lesson, but when he left her with meagre supplies of dry biscuits and water she had thought he would stay away for two, or perhaps three, days. But not this long.
She was so cold. She wrapped the thin silk of the cream negligee around her skeletal form, and tried to huddle under the bed covers. She wanted to remove the stockings - the suspenders were biting painfully into her flesh. But she needed the warmth. And she was scared to go to sleep. Scared of the dreams. She knew she was becoming delirious.
It was such a dreadful feeling, and it was happening with increasing frequency. She felt awake, but she was strangely unable to respond to stimuli around her. She was sure somebody was in the room with her. She could feel his presence, but she couldn’t force her eyes to open or her body to function. And then she knew with certainly that he was standing at the end of the mattress where she lay. He advanced, slowly, slowly towards her, looming over her. She tried to lift her arm to push him away, but her limbs wouldn’t obey her commands. She tried to scream, but couldn’t make a sound. Finally she awoke, her body bathed in a cold, cold sweat, scared to look at whatever was waiting for her.
In a rare moment of lucidity she recognised the source of her fear. It was nothing more sinister than a long red wig, sitting on its stand on a distant chest of drawers.
Then the delirium returned, and she sank back into the abyss of her terror.
Tom was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to complete his conversation with Laura. He’d still not had a chance to ask her about Danika either; there were just too many interruptions. He’d received some interesting news though. The family that Mirela Tinescy had been staying with had been interviewed, and they backed up Danika’s story. Mirela had definitely left a note saying that she’d been offered a big opportunity when she left them. But it appeared Danika had misunderstood one important thing. Mirela’s letter had never stated what type of opportunity. Tom remembered that Danika had heard all of this from Mirela’s replacement, and this new Allium girl had clearly jumped to the conclusion that this opportunity could only have been related to prostitution. But what if this was something completely different? What if the big opportunity involved killing Hugo Fletcher in return for a large wodge of cash?
It was a good theory, but that wasn’t what had him racing him back to the office. He’d had people crawling all over Hugo’s will in the last few hours, and it had revealed something unexpected and potentially exciting.
As soon as he walked in the door, there was a shout.
‘Boss, you need to see this! We need to get Jessica Armstrong in here. With what Hugo’s left her in his will, there is no way she was just his PA.’
Tom took the piece of paper being waved in the air. He read the marked paragraph and opened his eyes wide in astonishment.
‘Bloody hell - that’s more than his
wife
got! No wonder Brian Smedley was looking so uncomfortable. Okay, I take your point, we do need to see her. But I’d like us to do some more checking before we drag her in. We need lots of background - bank accounts, credit cards, lifestyle, you know the score. Let’s get that together, see where we’re up to in the morning, and then get her in. I can’t imagine she’s going anywhere, or she’d have gone already. Everybody happy with that?’
Clearly everybody wasn’t, as they’d been excited about possibly getting a result, but it made sense, and whilst he felt guilty about crushing their enthusiasm, they needed to do this right.
‘One more thing,’ Tom said. ‘Becky phoned to say that Laura’s checked the wig box. Only three can be accounted for, although Laura has come up with plausible reasons for where the other two could have gone. And of course they could have been thrown or given away. But somebody who had access to the house could also have taken one, and this could be our murderer. The fact that there were, at one time, five hand-made red wigs but now there are only three is too much of a coincidence. Let’s get thinking and see if we can come up with any ideas. Any questions?’
There weren’t, and Tom was left to reflect on some of the day’s more unlikely discoveries and where they were leading.
*
‘She lives in bloody Lowndes Square! Have you any idea how much apartments there cost? Bleeding millions!’
This was the news that greeted Tom as he walked into the morning briefing. Clearly, this had to be about Jessica.
‘Hang on, guys. She comes from a wealthy family. What else have we got?’
Tom took a sip from his strong black coffee. Despite an early night, sleep had been elusive. Every time he had started to drop off, an image of Kate’s pleading face had sprung into his mind, oddly replaced as he drifted into sleep by a picture of Laura, laughing at Hugo’s abject cruelty. So he needed a kick start, and he hoped the coffee would do it.
‘The apartment cost nine hundred thousand. She bought it two years ago, and she’s got a whopping seven hundred thousand pound mortgage. Can you imagine that!’
Ajay seemed incensed that somebody like Jessica should live in such luxury.
‘Do we know what she earns?’ Tom asked.
‘Yep - a generous but not Lowndes Square generous, seventy thousand. For a bloody secretary!’
‘Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Whatever we think about her finances, it doesn’t make her a murderer. We need to know how she pays her mortgage - there might be a reasonable explanation - and we need to know why Hugo left her so much money in his will. You never know, he might have just been feeling particularly generous.’
Ignoring the various expletives and mutterings from his team, Tom continued.
‘What I’m most interested in is the fact that the terms of the will effectively gag Jessica in the same way that Annabel has been gagged. One derogatory remark about Hugo, and she loses the lot. So what does she know? What is worth more than half a million pounds?’
He looked around the room, but clearly nobody had the answer.
‘Okay - let’s bring her in.’
*
An immaculate and clearly expensively dressed Jessica was shown into the interview room. Her light brown hair was sleekly tied back from a rather hard and angular face with a sharp nose and thin lips. Her imperious manner rubbed Tom up the wrong way even before he started to question her, but of course, he had to be polite.
‘Jessica, thank you for agreeing to answer some questions. I understand that you don’t want any legal representation, but if you change your mind at any point, just let me know.’
Jessica looked vaguely startled by the suggestion.
‘Why on earth would I need legal representation? I’m simply here to answer questions about Sir Hugo, I presume?’
Tom couldn’t bring himself to offer reassurance.
‘No, that’s not why we asked you to come in. We’ve been looking at your lifestyle, and we’ve looked at your earnings. The two just don’t correlate, I’m afraid. We need to understand how you can afford to live in Lowndes Square given your current salary.’
Jessica gave a theatrical sigh, clearly meant to signify her boredom. She closed her subtly made up eyes as if this were the most ridiculous question she had ever been asked.
‘Really, Inspector, you must realise that my parents are very wealthy. Money is no object to them at all.’
Tom really didn’t care about titles, but on this occasion he wasn’t prepared to overlook what he was sure was an intentional slight.