False Money (10 page)

Bea didn't think Maggie had a headache but, as the girl was obviously keen to do something else, there was no point in querying it.

On a Sunday morning, the mews was creepily quiet. Nothing moved, except for a well-fed cat. There were several parked cars. The sound of traffic on the main road outside was muted.

Bea parked her car outside Harry's door. Hermia's distinctive sports car was nowhere to be seen. Snowflakes were still descending at intervals in half-hearted fashion. There was a light dusting of snow on the ground, but no footprints led to or from Harry's door. His windows upstairs were closed and the curtains drawn. Had he had a heavy night, not got up yet?

Chris rang the bell. Nothing happened.

He thumped the door. Kicked it. It swung open. ‘That's odd.'

CJ caught his son's arm. ‘Let me go first.' CJ climbed the stairs in the shallow grey light and the others followed him into the living room on the first floor.

‘No one here,' said Chris, pushing his way between them and opening doors. A tiny kitchen, very clean. A shower room, and loo.

Bea homed in on a laptop, up-to-date version, open and running, but on a screen saver. A bottle of wine stood nearby, open, with a used wine glass.

‘Don't touch anything,' said CJ.

Too late. Chris tried to open the door into the bedroom, and failed. Something resisted him as he tried to open it.

‘What the . . .!' said Chris, and he gave an extra big heave. The door rebounded on him. ‘There's something behind the door. Help me to—' Another heave and he got his shoulder and head round the door, took one long look, retreated and let the door slam to in his face. ‘Oh.'

‘Harry?' said CJ, getting out his mobile.

Chris swallowed. ‘His face is . . . He's very dead. Hanging from . . . Oh God!'

He dived for the loo, and they heard him throw up. CJ thrust his head and one hand round the door, and returned. ‘Icy cold. No point trying to cut him down.' He got out his mobile. ‘Cambridge here. Is Inspector . . . ?'

Bea turned away to look out of the window.
Dear Lord, what is going on? I'm not a betting woman, but I'd lay odds that there's a suicide note on that laptop. I don't like anything about this. It doesn't feel right.

‘Don't touch anything,' said CJ, clicking off his phone. ‘The police will be here directly. We'd better wait downstairs in the car.'

Chris came out of the loo, looking shaky. ‘I pushed this and the bedroom door open.'

‘They'll take your prints for comparison.'

‘We were both here yesterday morning,' said Bea. ‘I'll try to remember what either of us touched.'

‘Anything different?' CJ, very sharp.

‘There were newspapers all over the place then. They're in the waste-paper basket now. There were two coffee cups on the table, one each for Harry and Hermia. A cafetière. No wine, bottle or glass. He was wearing a dressing gown over pyjamas, slippers. The laptop? I think it was on the floor in a case by the television.'

‘Anything else? I trust your eyes.'

‘He had a mobile phone with him. The latest. It was on the coffee table with . . . Let me think . . .' She closed her eyes to recall the scene. ‘There was dust on the coffee table. It has a glass top, difficult to keep clean. There were some crumbs on the floor; he'd been eating a croissant for breakfast, perhaps? Since then the floor's been hoovered and the table top cleaned. The doors leading out of this room weren't open when we came yesterday, so I didn't see inside the other rooms.'

‘Thank you, Bea. Will you two wait downstairs now?'

Police. Paramedics. A doctor.

Bea and Chris sat in her car. Bea turned the engine on, so that they could get warm.

The snow stopped. Started again without really meaning it. Later footprints smudged earlier footprints. Bea tried to ring Maggie, but the line was engaged. Bea knew that once Maggie got on to the phone, she might be on for hours. Eventually Bea got through and said they'd be some time, as Harry had been found dead. Maggie was shocked and wanted to know details.

More police arrived. After conferring upstairs, an inspector asked Bea and Chris to accompany them to the station, so that their statements could be taken. It looked open and shut; suicide, of course. But still, better to be safe than sorry, eh?

Bea made a statement, telling the police what she had seen. She asked what message Harry had left on the laptop and where his mobile had got to. They smiled and said she wasn't to worry about all that, leave it to them, they knew what they were doing, etcetera.

The station was warm enough. Fingerprints were taken. ‘For elimination purposes'. She didn't think she'd touched anything at Harry's, but supposed she might have done, without thinking. On further consideration, no, she really didn't think she'd touched anything. Fingerprints still had to be taken. She was given a cup of tea.

Chris was taciturn, monosyllabic. Polite. CJ was nowhere to be seen. He was ‘known' to the police, in the best possible way, of course. He was some sort of expert, called upon in emergencies. Bea thought that sometime she might ask him to define ‘emergencies'.

Bea considered that if anyone had done anything to Harry – and of course that was a big ‘if' – then his visitor, if he'd had a visitor, must have been and gone before the snow started in the night. What time had the snow started? It had been snowing for some time before she got up.

Finally Bea and Chris were allowed to go. Bea rang Maggie to say they were on their way, a police car transferred them back to the mews, and Bea drove herself and Chris back home. Her home. She wasn't particularly surprised to see CJ arriving in a taxi, just as she parked her car outside her door.

Bea half expected CJ to collect Chris and remove himself, but he drifted in with them, frowning. Chris seemed to be in a world of his own; a grim world, to judge by the look on his face.

Inside the house the central heating was ticking away, the lights were on in the kitchen, and there was a smell of something good cooking. Hurray.

Maggie had been busy. She'd spread herself all over the kitchen table, with large sheets of paper in an untidy pile in front of her and a mug of coffee at her elbow. There was no sign of the headache she'd claimed to have earlier.

Bea looked at the clock. Breakfast seemed a long time ago.

Maggie said, ‘Ready for a cuppa? Cheese scones in the tin, butter in the fridge. I've some lamb shanks in a casserole in the oven. Ready about six, if you can wait.'

Bea put the kettle on. Chris looked as if he still had a headache. Eyes half closed, he peered at what Maggie had been doing. ‘What are you doing?'

‘I've been ringing around. I tried everyone who knew Tomi, told them the news and asked did they think Tomi had ever taken drugs. No one thought she had. I told them how she'd died and, like me, they were shocked and then got angry, thinking of someone doing that to her. Shock and anger loosens tongues. So I asked each one if they knew who might have tried her with something – for fun, you know.'

She picked up the top piece of paper. ‘This is Simone's list, for instance. She gave me a couple of names, but it was all for recreational stuff, very mild, hardly illegal at all. So we talked about people who gave parties, and I asked her who she usually invited and how many people gatecrashed them, and we chatted for a long time about that, and I got quite a lot of names. She even gave me some telephone numbers.

‘Then I tried other people I'd met with Tomi. Mostly they were from your team, Chris, people who'd been involved in making the film. Some I knew quite well, and some I didn't, but they all go to parties, or nearly all of them, so I yakked on and got more lists of people they invite, and one or two more names, people who have a reputation for pushing drugs. I started a new list with each person I spoke to.'

‘Good grief!' Chris was impressed. ‘That must have taken hours.'

‘You've been away for hours. Some names come up on everyone's list; some, I've never heard of.'

Bea picked up a couple of lists and compared names. ‘There must be a hundred names here.' She spotted a discrepancy, looked at Maggie, who was all wide-eyed innocence, and decided not to mention what she'd seen.

Maggie shrugged. ‘We need Oliver and a computer. He could sort it out. He rang, by the way. I said you were out and told him what had been happening. He's mad keen to get back to help us, said could you collect him about noon tomorrow instead of waiting till Wednesday, and I said I thought you might. He'll ring back later to confirm. Oh, and Nicole rang, too. I said you were out and she sounded really angry; wanted you to go over there and cook a meal for her or something. I said you'd ring her when you got back, but that might not be till late and she should get a takeaway.'

Oh dear. Bea's hand went to the phone. If Nicole really needed her, she must go. At once. She hesitated, took her hand away because it was too late for her to go over there today. She'd ring Nicole back as soon as she could.

Maggie realigned her pile of paper. ‘I spotted a couple of names of possible drug pushers which come up fairly regularly, but I don't know either of them. In fact, I got two different spellings for each one, so there may be four people there or two or three, or . . . whatever.'

CJ bent over her shoulder, lifted up the top couple of sheets and glanced down them. If he'd noticed what Bea'd seen, he said nothing about it. ‘This is incredible. It would have taken the police hours to find so much out, and these people probably wouldn't have talked openly to police, anyway. You haven't got phone numbers for everyone?'

‘No, and a lot of it is hearsay; two people said they'd heard that if you wanted something to liven you up, you could invite so-and-so because he had some pretty good stuff for sale, but then they'd say they hadn't tried it themselves, of course. They'd probably deny it if asked direct, or if they were asked tomorrow. It was the shock of Tomi's death which made them indiscreet. Also, I suspect that those who denied all knowledge of drug availability might know a lot more about it than some of the others. Might even sell it themselves. Maybe I'm being fanciful.'

‘You're a wonder,' said CJ. ‘May I have these?'

She got up to fetch a large envelope for him from the side. ‘I've run off some photocopies for you. I liked Tomi. I'm not much good at office work or computers or anything, but I thought this was something I could do for her. So the police finally let you go?'

Bea shuddered. CJ pinched in his mouth. Chris said, ‘We had to give statements to the police because we found Harry, dead. It looks as though he committed suicide.'

‘What?' Maggie couldn't believe it. ‘He's the last person, I'd have thought.'

‘What makes you say that?' CJ, putting her under a microscope.

Bea dished out plates, knives, scones and butter. Put the kettle on.

Maggie looked bewildered. ‘Well, I suppose I oughtn't to say that, but Tomi did talk about him quite a bit, and she said he was always so pleased with himself. He only ever talked to her about what he was doing, and what he wanted to do. If Tomi ventured an opinion he cut her off at the knees. I asked her why she continued to go out with him, and she said he'd been quite an experience, but she was probably going to move on sometime soon.'

Chris hunched his shoulders. ‘He left a suicide note on his laptop.'

CJ took a stool, helping himself to a scone. ‘His body was found hanging from a dressing-gown cord via a hook behind his bedroom door. A chair had fallen over beside him. There was indeed a suicide message on his computer. I believe the police will think he killed Tomi after an argument, stuck a syringe into her to make it look as if she'd tried drugs, and dumped her out in the country. They think it was he who sent the texts from her phone, to give himself some sort of alibi and stave off enquiries from her friends and workplace.'

Bea made a big pot of tea. ‘So where's her mobile? And where's his? Did they find them at Harry's?'

‘They haven't finished searching yet. If they don't find them, they'll say he got rid of them after texting the police and Chris last night.'

Maggie shook her head. ‘I suppose that makes sense. How horrible. I don't think he treated her well—'

‘Plus,' said Chris, ‘he was all over someone else as soon as she was out of the way.'

Maggie nodded. ‘But why would he want to commit suicide?'

‘The only person he ever loved was himself,' said Chris. ‘He didn't love Tomi, and he didn't love Hermia. He fancied being seen around with them, that's all.'

‘Nevertheless,' said CJ, round a mouthful of scone, ‘I think the police will accept the easy option. Maggie, just to tie up loose ends, did Harry have access to anyone selling drugs?'

‘Well, I suppose we all did or could have done. I mean; they are around if you want them. Someone told me, ages ago, that you only had to ask and someone would know someone who could help you.'

‘Can you point out any names of people Harry might have had contact with?'

‘I suppose so.' She rustled through her papers, then pushed them away from her. ‘No, I don't believe it. None of it. If Tomi died of a drug overdose, then someone else gave it to her without her knowledge, and if Harry committed suicide, then I'm a . . . a Polish plumber!'

‘Agreed,' said Bea. ‘CJ, what can we do to help?'

‘Nothing, my dear. Let the police deal with it from now on.'

‘Tomi's parents?'