At Risk (18 page)

Wetherby narrowed his eyes a fraction. “And you think that the man they’re talking about could be our silent gunman from Norfolk.”

Liz said nothing, and returning his pencil to the Fortnum and Mason jar, Wetherby reached downwards to one of the lower drawers of his desk. Opening it, he took out a bottle of Laphroaig whisky and two tumblers, and poured a shot into each. Pushing one of the tumblers towards Liz, and raising a hand to indicate that she should stay where she was, he lifted the receiver of one of the telephones on his desk and dialled a number.

The call, Liz swiftly realised, was to his wife.

“How did it go today?” Wetherby murmured. “Was it awful?”

The answer seemed to take some time. Liz concentrated on the smoky taste of the whisky, on the beating of the rain at the window, on the knocking of the radiator—anything but the conversation taking place in front of her.

“I have to stay late,” Wetherby was saying. “Yes, I’m afraid there’s a bit of a crisis and . . . No, I wouldn’t do this to you unless it was absolutely unavoidable, I know that you’ve had the most hellish day . . . I’ll call as soon as I’m in the car. No, don’t wait up.”

Replacing the receiver, he took a long swallow of the whisky, and then reversed one of the photo frames on his desk so that Liz could see it. The photograph showed a woman in a striped navy blue and white T-shirt sitting at a café table, holding a coffee cup. She had dark hair and delicate, fine-boned features and was looking into the camera with an amused tilt of the head.

The thing that struck Liz most forcibly about the woman, however, was her complexion. Although she couldn’t have been more than thirty-five years old, her skin was the colour of ivory, so pale and bloodless as to appear almost transparent. At first Liz thought this was the result of a photo-processing error, but a glance at the café’s other customers told her that the colour balance was more or less correct.

“It’s called red blood-cell aplasia,” said Wetherby quietly. “It’s a disorder of the bone marrow. She has to go into hospital for a blood transfusion every month.”

“She went into hospital today?”

“This morning, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” said Liz. Her small triumph in identifying the PSS seemed almost childish now. She shrugged. “Sorry to be the bringer of news that keeps you here.”

A minute shake of the head. “You’ve done exceptionally well.” He swirled the Laphroaig and raised his tumbler with an oblique smile. “Apart from anything else, you’ve provided me with the wherewithal to ruin Geoffrey Fane’s evening.”

“Well, that’s something.”

For a minute or two, as they finished their drinks, they sat in complicit silence. Around them many of the offices were empty, and the distant sound of a Hoover told Liz that the cleaners had arrived.

“Go home,” he told her. “I’ll get started on telling everyone who needs to know.”

“OK. First, though, I’m going back to my desk to run a few checks on Peregrine Lakeby.”

“You’re going back to Norfolk tomorrow?”

“I think I should.”

Wetherby nodded. “Keep me informed, then.”

Liz stood. A barge sounded a long mournful note out on the river.

A
fter a wet night the day dawned clear, and as Liz drove northwards towards the M11 the roads hissed beneath the Audi’s tyres. She had slept badly; in fact she was not certain that she had slept at all. The amorphous mass of worry that the investigation represented had taken on a crushing weight, and the more desperately she had sought oblivion between the crumpled sheets, the faster her heart had raced in her chest. People’s lives were threatened, she knew that much, and the image of Ray Gunter’s broken head endlessly replicated itself in her mind. At intervals the features of the dead fisherman became those of Sohail Din. “Why don’t you take up amateur dramatics?” he seemed to be asking, until she realised that the voice in her head was her mother’s. But she couldn’t quite summon her mother to her side; instead, smiling knowingly at her, was an ivory-pale figure in a striped navy blue and white T-shirt. Through her transparent skin, Liz could see the hesitant passage of the blood in the veins and arteries. “I’m telling her that I’m in love with you,” Mark was shouting, somewhere at the edge of her consciousness. “I’m talking about our future!”

But she must have slept, because there was a point at which she quite definitely awoke, thirsty and sore-headed with the lingering smoke of Wetherby’s Laphroaig in her mouth. She had aimed for an early start and a fast exit from London, but unfortunately a sizeable proportion of the city’s inhabitants seemed to have had the same idea. By eleven o’clock she was still half a dozen miles from Marsh Creake, trapped on a narrow road behind a low-bed truck loaded with sugar beet. Its driver was in no hurry at all, and if he was aware that he was shedding a couple of beets with every rut and bump that he encountered, the fact didn’t worry him. It worried Liz, though, and at times she had to swing wildly on to the verge in order to avoid the bouncing vegetables, any one of which could have blasted through a headlight or found some other way of causing three figures’ worth of damage to the Audi’s bodywork.

Eventually, her shoulders aching with tension, she pulled up outside the Trafalgar, and on venturing inside found Cherisse Hogan polishing glasses in the empty lounge.

“You again!” said Cherisse, darting Liz a lazy-eyed smile. She was wearing a tight lavender sweater and looking, in her gypsyish way, rather spectacular. She had clearly recovered from any short-term distress that Ray Gunter’s death might have caused her.

“I was wondering if you had a room?” Liz enquired.

Cherisse’s eyebrows rose, and she moved unhurriedly into the shadowed fastness of the kitchen area—there presumably to consult her employer. Clive Badger should count himself lucky, thought Liz, if the rumours about the pair of them were true. And they almost certainly were true; women like Anne Lakeby had a knack for sorting the wheat from the chaff when it came to local intrigue.

Cherisse returned a couple of minutes later holding a key suspended from a miniature brass anchor, and led Liz up a narrow carpeted stair to a door bearing the legend “Temeraire.” The three other rooms were “Swiftsure,” “Ajax” and “Victory.”

“Temeraire” was low-ceilinged and warm, with a plum carpet, a tiled fireplace and a divan with a candlewick bedspread. It took Liz no more than a couple of minutes to unpack her clothes. When she went downstairs again Cherisse was still alone in the lounge bar, and beckoned Liz over with an inclination of the head.

“You know I told you about that Mitch? The one that drunk with Ray?”

“The one who reminded you of a bull terrier?” asked Liz.

“Yeah. That one. Staffy. He was on the tobacco game.”

“Importing and selling cigarettes for cash, you mean? Without paying the duty?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know? Did he offer you some?”

“No, Ray did. He said Mitch could get as many as I wanted. He said I could have them for cost and then mark them up and flog them on to the punters at bar prices.”

“Hang on, Cherisse. You’re saying that Ray told you this on Mitch’s behalf?”

“Yeah—he obviously thought he was doing him a favour. But Mitch went completely off his head. Told Ray he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about—’scuse my French—and told him to button it or he’d drop him on the spot. Completely off his head.”

“But you reckon that Ray was right? That Mitch was selling cut-price tobacco and cigarettes?”

Cherisse considered. “Well, it would be a strange thing to say if he wasn’t, wouldn’t it? And lots of people are into that. Working in a pub you’re always being offered cheap booze and fags. Especially fags. Everyone’s got a half-dozen cartons out in the van.”

“And have you ever bought any?”

“Me? No! I’d lose my job.”

“So Mr. Badger doesn’t buy from them either?”

Cherisse shook her head and continued with her desultory processing of the glasses. “I thought I’d mention it, though,” she said. “He’s a nasty piece of work, that Mitch.”

“He certainly sounds it,” said Liz. “Thanks.”

She stared out into the empty bar. Pale winter sunshine streamed through the leaded windows, illuminating the dust motes and gilding the accessories on the wood-panelled walls. If Mitch, whoever he was, was involved in the selling of cut-price tobacco, and had told Ray Gunter as much, why was he so angry when Gunter had mentioned it to Cherisse? Much of a tobacco-smuggler’s life was taken up with persuading publicans and bar staff to take his goods off his hands.

The only reason that Liz could fathom was that Mitch had graduated from tobacco-smuggling to more dangerous games. Games in which loose talk could be fatal. Thanking Cherisse again, she changed a ten-pound note into coins, and called Frankie Ferris from the pay phone in the pub’s entrance hall. The hall was overheated, and smelt of furniture polish and air freshener. Ferris, as usual, seemed to be in a state of advanced agitation.

“It’s really come on top with this murder,” he whispered. “Total, like . . . Eastman’s been locked in his office since yesterday morning. Last night he was there till—”

“Was the dead man anything to do with Eastman?”

“I don’t know, and I wouldn’t ask. Right now I just want to keep my head down, and if the law comes knocking I want some serious . . .”

“Serious?”

“Like, protection, OK? I’m taking a major risk just making this call. What if someone—”

“Mitch,” said Liz. “I need to know about a man called Mitch.”

A short, charged silence.

“Braintree,” said Ferris. “Eight o’clock this evening on the top level of the multistorey by the station. Come alone.” The phone went dead.

He smells trouble, thought Liz, replacing the handset. He wants to keep on pocketing Eastman’s money but he also wants to protect his back when it all blows up. He knows he’ll get no change out of Bob Morrison, so he’s come back to me.

She wondered briefly about going down to the village hall, reestablishing contact with Goss and Whitten, and finding out if they had moved the case forward. After a moment’s thought, however, she decided to drive down to Headland Hall and speak to Peregrine Lakeby first. Once she had linked up with the others it would be harder to keep information to herself.

With a quiet popping of gravel, the Audi came to a halt outside Headland Hall. This time the doorbell was answered by Lakeby himself. He was wearing a long Chinese dressing gown and a cravat, and was surrounded by a faint odour of limes.

He looked surprised to see Liz, but swiftly recovered himself, and led her along the tiled corridor into the kitchen. Here, at a broad work table of scrubbed pine, a woman was drying wine glasses with an unhurried action which Liz immediately recognised. This must be Elsie Hogan, mother to Cherisse.

“Aga’s smoking again, Mr. Lakeby,” said the woman, glancing incuriously at Liz.

Peregrine frowned, pulled on an oven glove, and gingerly opened one of the Aga doors. Smoke whooshed out, and taking a log from a tall basket, he slung it in and slammed the door shut again.

“That should do it.”

The woman looked at him doubtfully. “Those logs are a bit green, Mr. Lakeby. I think that’s the problem. Did they come from the garage?”

Peregrine looked vague. “Quite possibly. Have a word with Anne about them. She’ll be back from King’s Lynn in an hour.” He turned to Liz. “Coffee?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” said Liz, reflecting ruefully that you couldn’t say to a man what she was about to say to Peregrine Lakeby and be drinking his coffee at the same time. So she stood and watched as he boiled water, spooned ground arabica beans into a cafetière, mixed, plunged, and poured the steaming result into a Wedgwood bone-china cup.

“Now,” said Peregrine, when they had quit the smoky realm of the kitchen and were once again comfortably disposed in the book-lined drawing room, “tell me how I can help you.”

Liz met his enquiring, faintly amused gaze. “I’d like to know about the arrangement you had with Ray Gunter,” she said quietly.

Peregrine’s head tilted thoughtfully. His hair, Liz noticed, swept back into steel-grey wings over each ear. “Which arrangement was that, precisely? If you mean the arrangement by which he kept his boats on the beach, I was under the impression that we had discussed that in some detail last time you and your colleagues came here.”

So, thought Liz, they haven’t been back.

“No,” she said. “I mean the arrangement by which Ray Gunter brought illicit consignments ashore by night, and you agreed to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to any disturbance. How much was Gunter paying you to ignore his activities?”

Peregrine’s smile tightened. The patrician mask showed minute signs of strain. “I don’t know where you’ve got your information from, Miss . . . er, but the idea that I might have had a criminal relationship with a man like Ray Gunter is quite frankly preposterous. May I ask what—or who—led you to such a bizarre conclusion?”

Liz reached into her briefcase and removed two printed sheets. “May I tell you a story, Mr. Lakeby? A story about a woman known in certain circles as the Marquise, real name Dorcas Gibb?”