He stood up, and finished his water. ‘Thanks,’ he said, putting down the empty glass. ‘For everything.’
He had thanked Freddie for giving him unasked-for advice on his relationship with Judy. This had to be the weirdest week he had ever lived through.
Mike had done it right second time around. Then he had slept for twelve solid hours, opening his eyes to discover Rachel looking down at him, smiling. He smiled back, and reached out a hand, touched her golden hair.
‘We got to talk,’ she said.
‘You were talking, pet. All the time.’
‘What was I sayin’?’
‘As if you didn’t know.’ He had been a young man again with her. He had wondered, during the months of longing for her, if Rachel could really deliver all that she promised. And when he had decided to find out, it had been going to be a one-night stand. But now that she had fulfilled that promise and more, he fully intended taking her up on her huskily whispered offers to make it a more permanent arrangement if that was what he wanted. ‘You suggested I might want more of this,’ he said.
‘And do you?’ She knelt astride him, smiled down at him.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘But I think you hope you can up the price,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll settle for what you were offerin’Bernard.’
‘You’ll settle for the market value.’
‘You were offerin’ Bernard four times that much for it,’ she said, bending to kiss his lips briefly, tantalizingly.
He put his hands on her thighs. ‘‘That was when it was Bernard’s land,’ he said. ‘It’s yours now.’
She nodded. ‘Reckon it’s a seller’s market now,’ she said, her mouth on his again. ‘You want to haggle, is that it? Gypsies are good at hagglin’. Start me off.’
‘The market value,’ he repeated.
‘If you had to go through that wood it’d cost you a lot more’n that.’ She pulled her head back, and smiled at him. ‘You’ll have to up your offer,’ she said. ‘ Or how can we bargain?’
He shook his head.
She sat back. ‘You go through that wood and you’d get protesters and I don’t know what all down here. Lyin’ down in front of the excavators. Vandalizin’ the equipment, holdin’ up the work. Whole village’d turn on you. Wouldn’t’ve been so bad when you’d no option, but now …’ She shrugged. ‘ The protesters might even get the road stopped, if I’m willin’ to sell my land for the same price you were offerin’ Bernard,’ she said, smiling. ‘ Not like I’ve doubled the stakes nor nothin’ So you goin’ to make me an offer?’
He shook his head again.
The smile grew a little uncertain. ‘Aren’t you supposed to haggle too?’ she asked. ‘ You’re not offerin’ nothin’. So how can I?’
‘I’ve
made
my offer.’
‘But the market value’s no good to me. Loan company’d have it all, and I’d still owe them money. Wouldn’t be able to pay off nothin’ else. I’d lose every-thin’ I got.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I’ll settle for three-quarters of what you were offerin’ Bernard.’
‘No deal.’
‘Two-thirds.’
‘No deal.’
‘Can’t go no lower than that. Lower’n that, and you can’t have no more of this.’
‘Oh, I think I can have more,’ Mike said. ‘But you can’t. It’s the market value, take it or leave it’
He watched her realize that this wasn’t some teasing game, watched her face grow serious. ‘How much do you reckon it’d cost you to go through the wood?’ she asked. I’ll settle for that.’
‘I won’t have to go through the wood.’
‘You will if I won’t sell.’
‘If you won’t sell, the land will be repossessed.’
‘The loan company’ll know how bad you need it,’ she said. ‘ They won’t settle for the market price. Pay me what you’d pay them. That way you don’t lose nothin’, and I get to keep somethin’. And you’d get me into the bargain,’ she said, and smiled, her eyes mischievously bright. ‘ Loan company won’t cap that.’
‘It would indeed be a bargain,’ said Mike. ‘Except that I
am
the loan company.’
And for once, Rachel Bailey had nothing to say.
He smiled at her. ‘If someone’s offering a free gift, I take it. I’m a businessman, pet.’
‘You’re a bastard,’ she said quietly.
‘That too.’ He sighed, stroked her thighs. ‘ You worked hard for months making me desperate to screw you,’ he said. And now I have.’
She looked at him, nodding slightly. ‘Reckon you have,’ she said, her voice slow and easy and gentle. She made to get off him, but he kept his hands where they were, and she sat back down again.
‘And if you want a roof over your head, you’ll let me go on screwing you,’ he said. ‘Because if you don’t, by the end of the week I guarantee you’ll be homeless and penniless.’
She was listening.
‘I’m prepared to let you keep the house. And a bit of land. From what you were telling me last night, you should be able to run a smallholding. It won’t be much of a one, with an access road going right past it, but maybe you can do pick-your-own strawberries or something. How you make your living isn’t my concern. How you pay the rent is.’
‘I want it done legal,’ she said. ‘So you can’t throw me out when your wife catches on.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll arrange for us to see my solicitor this afternoon,’ he said. ‘And you’d better hope that my wife doesn’t catch on, pet, or you’ll have to start finding money for the rent. I’ll throw you out quickly enough if you get behind on that. But then, you know that. I’m a bastard, remember?’
She nodded again, and got out of bed, pulled on her non-existent dress, and left. He watched her walk barefoot down his driveway, then break into a run.
He had Bailey’s land, but he had lost his gamble just as surely as Rachel had lost hers. Still, he had got what he wanted out of her, if not her husband, and he had kicked over the domestic traces for the first time in his life. He’d be smoking cigars in the lounge next. He smiled. Rachel Bailey’s lounge, at any rate.
And
he could call it a lounge without being corrected, into the bargain.
Curtis left court relieved and thankful to be no longer facing a murder charge, but thinking angrily of what a fool he’d made of himself in front of Lloyd. He’d almost cried when he had described Rachel’s bruises; he had broken down altogether when he’d told them about how he’d felt, standing over Bailey, the knife in his hand. All the emotion had come rushing back, and had overwhelmed him. Because he had enjoyed sticking a knife into Bernard Bailey, and that had disturbed him more than he liked to admit, even to himself, never mind to them. The physical contact, the feeling that he was hurting him, the little shivers his body had made as the blade had gone in. He’d enjoyed that. He had wanted to hurt Bailey for all the hurt he’d done Rachel.
He hadn’t enjoyed being told how foolish he had been, and how lucky he was not to be facing prison, by Finch, of all people. And he wasn’t going to enjoy the next thing he had to do either. He didn’t suppose it mattered to Rachel who had killed Bailey, but it mattered to him.
And now he was going to have to tell her that he hadn’t killed him after all.
‘McQueen’s just confirmed that the road to the so-called Rookery won’t be going through the so-called Bluebell Wood; Jack told Terri as she came into the sitting room, rather surprised that she had chosen to join him at all.
‘Good,’ she said, shortly. ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘Real news or village news?’ he asked.
‘Both. They’ve arrested the TV reporter for Bailey’s murder.’
Jack blinked. ‘The
TV
reporter?’ he repeated. ‘Why on earth would he want to kill Bailey?’
‘Well, rumour has it that he was getting rather more out of his visits to Bailey’s farm than just a good story.’
Oh, God. Now how was he supposed to react? The jealous lover? The indifferent philanderer? His reaction was that of the totally confused liar who had finally run out of ingenuity. ‘People are bound to assume that, I suppose,’ was what he eventually came up with. It was true. For all they knew the TV reporter was a homicidal maniac, and had had nothing whatever to do with Rachel Bailey. But he doubted it.
‘And there’s something else,’ she said. ‘Mrs Day had a bit of news as well that might concern you.’
She was enjoying this, whatever it was.
‘Jim Day does Mike McQueen’s garden,’ she said. And when he came home for lunch, he told Mrs Day that he’d found frilly panties and a pair of women’s sandals under McQueen’s garden table.’
Jack smiled. ‘ Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Who needs the fleshpots of Soho when they can have Harmston?’
‘Who needs the fleshpots of Soho when they can have Rachel Bailey, you mean,’ said Terri. ‘Guess who he saw leaving the house before McQueen had come down for breakfast? With nothing on her feet? I don’t know if he was in a position to check up on what other items of her wardrobe were missing.’
She had been with Mike McQueen as well? She had been quite explicit. Married men were out, she had said, and he had believed her. But that had been for his benefit alone, presumably, because no one was more married than Mike McQueen, and he was more than thirty years older than Rachel, for God’s sake. And was he, who had only yesterday concocted an entire history for his love affair with Rachel Bailey, the only man in the county who hadn’t actually slept with her?
And there’s some story about money that’s supposed to have gone missing from Bailey’s safe,’ Terry went on. ‘The police practically accused Steve Paxton of stealing it, and he walked out on her, saying she’d put the idea into their heads. So your girlfriend’s lost her foreman. She can’t have offered
him
her favours, presumably, so that might be some consolation to you.’
Jack wasn’t listening. If the money in the safe was an issue in Bailey’s murder, then it was relevant, and he wasn’t going to get away with this for very much longer.
‘I don’t imagine for a moment there ever was any money in the safe,’ said Terri. ‘It’s probably something she and her TV reporter cooked up between them to try to make it look like a burglary, or whatever. Bailey was completely broke, wasn’t he?’
‘Mm,’ said Jack.
‘And she was spending money he didn’t have and sleeping with everyone who crossed her path,’ Terri said. ‘I’m not surprised he was threatening to kill her. But it looks as though she had other ideas.’
Things were going from intolerable to impossible, and his tangled web was unravelling itself faster than he could keep weaving it.
‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks. I had a drop too much consolation last night.’
Judy felt guilty. Lloyd obviously hadn’t had any more sleep than she had; for once, her ability to crash out and let the world take care of itself had deserted her. But he was used to sleepless nights, and to the odd bit of overenthusiasm for malt whisky. It didn’t usually make him look like that.
She’d
done that to him, and she felt awful about that.
He hadn’t picked her up that morning, and had avoided her when she had finally arrived. He was here now only because he had to be, because they had to discuss the now complicated Bailey business. She had to grab her chance, in the hope that it hadn’t gone for good. ‘I know we don’t discuss these things at work,’ she said. ‘ But I really didn’t mean to upset you. And I
was
going to tell you.’
He nodded. ‘ I know,’ he said. ‘I just let rip as usual. Ignore me.’
She couldn’t, and he knew it. Because she never knew which bits were true. But the row, if that was what it had been, was over, and she felt a huge wave of relief wash over her.
He massaged his forehead. ‘You don’t have any aspirin, do you?’ he asked.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’ll teach me to wrap myself round a whisky bottle.’
Judy frowned a little. ‘You had a headache before you did that,’ she said.
‘Well, it didn’t make it any better.’ He sat on her desk. ‘I suppose you and I should go and have a chat with Nicola Hutchins,’ he said. ‘Enough morphine to kill a horse, was Freddie’s expression, and I don’t think that was just a figure of speech.’
Judy agreed that they certainly should, having regard to all the strange circumstances. ‘Though we do know that two other people were there before her,’ she said. ‘And Freddie says it could have happened earlier. I have to say I can’t see Nicola Hutchins having the guts to do it.’
‘I can’t see her immediate motive,’ said Lloyd.
They had now seen Bernard Bailey’s will, and, as Rachel had told Lloyd, Nicola was specifically excluded. There were some bequests to animal charities which wouldn’t now be paid out, and the residue went to his wife in its entirety. That may have upset Nicola at the time, but it seemed unlikely that she would murder the man twenty months later as a result of that slight. And it meant that belief of monetary gain was out. Still, lifelong abuse had to be regarded as a motive, even if they didn’t know what had lit the touchpaper.
‘You know what?’ Lloyd said, as they got into his car, though hers had been refuelled, and she had offered to chauffeur him. ‘I can’t help feeling as though someone’s pulling our strings.’
‘Who?’
‘You’ll only say I’m paranoid.’
‘Curtis Law was on a train,’ said Judy. ‘But Rachel Bailey wasn’t. Where was she between eleven and twelve? Nicola Hutchins said she thought Rachel was there with her husband. And perhaps she was. Perhaps Law was at the hotel on his own when he took his taxi to St Pancras.’
‘She also said that she thought Bailey had been hitting Rachel, and I seem to remember that according to you, she has no bruises.’
‘Nicola was guessing about that!’
‘She was guessing about the whole thing. Or lying.’ Judy looked at him seriously. He’d asked her if she loved him enough to tell him, and she did. ‘ Have you really not crossed Rachel Bailey off?’ she asked. ‘And if not, why not? Because you fancy her and you’re overcompensating, because you’re being paranoid about her boyfriend, or because you seriously think she poisoned her husband?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Because I’m quite certain that she was involved right from the start in her boyfriend’s attempt to murder her husband. And because I don’t believe Law just happened to pick a night when someone else chose to murder him.’