The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (26 page)

Beverley noted it all down. Again the subject of "Carlos" arose.

"I haven't been able to find anything," he confessed. There was a sheepish, almost deceitful lilt in the statement that Beverley noticed at once. She smiled gently. "It must be so difficult for you, Mr Sweet."

He looked up at once, saw in her eyes an understanding, sympathetic young woman, and responded. "Yes."

She asked after the smallest of pauses, "Would you like me to look through her things?"

His rush to accept could, she noted, be described variously as moving or pathetic; she opted for the pragmatic response and hid the emotion she actually felt. He took her upstairs and stood in the doorway to Millie's room while she suppressed her desire and her training to ransack it, and sorted gently through the sediment of a life. She looked around as she worked, reflecting that, as soon as Millicent Sweet had breathed for the final time, all of it had turned from beloved possessions to garbage.

She found her treasure in some diaries — hideously twee and overly feminine — tucked into a drawer of the built-in cupboards. Folded at the back were some letters. They were mostly from girlfriends, but three of them were, to Beverley's gaze, of purest ray serene. One was from the mysterious Carlos; there was no home address, but amongst the nauseating lovidoviness it mentioned that he was thinking of leaving his employment at the Leishman Centre in Newcastle. He didn't mention any other details, but at least she had the end of a thread, and that would have to be enough.

The other two were unexpected and therefore even more exciting. They were from Robin Turner and they were, effectively, love letters.

Beverley didn't know how Millicent's affair with her boss fitted in to the puzzle, but she recognized jewels among dung when she saw them.

*

"Helena?"

It was early in the morning and he guessed he would be waking her up, but it was important. He had tried three times the night before without success, leaving each time a message on her answer phone, leaving himself each time with a sense of severe frustration.

And while most of the frustration was because he felt — he
knew
— that the pace was quickening, that something hideous was happening around them, there was a still, small voice that told him she was out and she was almost certainly out with her new friend.

Jealousy
?

He didn't want to use the word to himself, but that was only because he could not allow himself to analyse his emotions.

"Helena?" he repeated before she could answer. He guessed he had woken her.

"Hello?" She sounded disorientated.

"Helena, it's John."

"Oh." Her voice was breathy, the early morning weariness layering her voice with a husky lowness of tone that was almost arousing.

"I'm sorry to wake you so early … "

"It's all right."

" … but I think I've made a breakthrough of sorts."

It took her a moment to grasp what he was saying and then he heard her sit up, the sheets rustling. "What?"

"Turner worked on the same project for PEP as Millie did."

"Turner?"

"They're linked, Helena. Both in life and death."

"What does it mean?" Sleep was forgotten now.

"We ought to meet, Helena. I'll tell you then." He paused. "Oh, and get back onto Raymond Sweet. Find out if he's found anything more out about Carlos."

"Carlos?"

"He might be the key to this, Helena."

"Key to what?"

"Something very odd, I think. Have you managed to get anything on PEP yet?"

"I've asked one of the partners to look into it for me; he's an expert on company law. I hope he'll have something to say to me today."

"Good. When can we meet?"

She tried to remember her diary. "Not 'till this evening, I think. Say, six?"

Six, it would have to be.

*

Helena lay back in bed and beside her Alasdair, apparently disturbed by the movement opened his eyes. "Business?" he asked.

Helena said only, "Yes," then reached for her dressing gown. She slipped it on, stood, tied it and then went to the bathroom. Looking into the mirror she tried to work out why she felt as she did.

A
virgin
despoiled

It was stupid and illogical — by no stretch was the term biologically applicable — but it was how she felt. The last two nights had seen such an intensification in her relationship with Alasdair that by the time he had driven her home late last night, she had been eager to take him to bed. Within six minutes of her opening the front door they had been kissing, kissing with a passion that she found joyously, wondrously empowering. She had led him to the bedroom, past the answerphone with its waiting messages, shortly afterwards.

And yet now …

Now she thought that perhaps she had lost something. She felt like a drunk who had binged after a decade of abstention, like a slimmer who had been sick on cream cakes. Years of discipline dissolved.

Angrily she shook her head, sharply twisting the tap to let water run. For God's sake. She hadn't taken a vow of chastity! She was entitled to human pleasures.

Yet …

Yet she wondered if she had done the right thing.

Then Eisenmenger somehow found his irritating way into her culpabilities. In a near-Shakespearean manner, he appeared in her mind, bringing with him yet more reproach. What the hell did it have to do with him?

She attempted to drown her demand, made silently of no one, with the water in the sink. Like a dead fly, it would not sink away.

*

In the bedroom, his eyes closed, his face clouded, Alasdair Riley-Day lay and considered. He considered the night that had just passed, what he had just heard, and what he would have to do now.

Helena had been an interesting fuck. Inexperienced and somewhat conservative. He had considered it wisest not to push her into the areas that he would have preferred, not on a first session anyway, and so had allowed her to dictate the pattern of play. Still, it had had its compensations. She had an attractive body and this, together with a strangely adolescent eagerness had served to keep him fairly satisfied. He had thought that perhaps in future a few lessons might enhance the experience, but suddenly it looked as if that would not be the case, not if his deductions from what he had just heard were correct.

Things were slipping. The use of the name, "Carlos," had been so surprising he had almost given himself away. That was one matter that could not wait.

From the bathroom he heard water pouring into the basin. She would be in there at least five minutes — plenty of time.

When Helena came back into the bedroom, she was alone, with not even a note to explain her new lover's disappearance. She called out, then searched each room of the flat, but she was indisputably alone. She returned to the bedroom. What the hell was going on?

*

Beverley's decision to drive all the way to Scotland, a drive of over five hours, was not taken lightly. She had half-concocted a story about following up on a lead on a suspect in an organized car-stealing case, but she had still to be careful. Lambert, should he decide she was moonlighting, would at once have the ammunition he needed to put a fucking great bullet in her grey stuff. She decided it was safest not to let him know. Even though the Chief Superintendent's desire for the feel and taste of her pudenda had proved a useful defence in the past, it was not an untrumpable hand; too much trouble and even a fat, toad-like Chief Superintendent could find pleasures in other vulvas.

Thus when she began her investigations at the hotel at which Mark Hartmann had so spectacularly achieved a climax of betrayal, she was distinctly nervous. From the banqueting manager she obtained lists of delegates and company representatives who had attended the meeting, noting with interest that although Alan Rosenthal's name was listed, Claire Verner's was absent. She then spoke with various staff members, hoping (but not expecting) that they might have some recollection of Rosenthal and Claire Verner; they did not. She made an inspection of the rooms that had been occupied by Hartmann and Rosenthal and found nothing. It was all as she had expected and might have been completely unsuccessful if good fortune had not struck. The woman who showed her the rooms was the Head of Housekeeping within the hotel and, just as they were leaving the room that Rosenthal had occupied, she said, "What about the watch?"

Guests left things in their rooms all the time. Many of them, Beverley suspected, then found their way into the safety of the maid's pocket, but in this case honesty had found expression and it had been given to the hotel management for safekeeping.

In the manager's office, the watch was produced. It was in a sealed envelope carefully labelled with the room number, the date of discovery and the name of the guest staying there at the time.

"We tried to contact Mr Rosenthal, but there was a problem. The telephone number and the address he gave were apparently false." The manager sounded aggrieved, as if a nasty trick had been played on him and it had clearly been Beverley's fault. He was about to open the envelope when Beverley stopped him.

"Don't!"

Startled he froze, his face wearing a wide-eyed expression, perhaps fearing a bomb.

"Fingerprints," she explained, holding out her hand, into which he dropped the envelope as if it were suddenly radioactive. "Who else handled it?"

The manager, a tall, saturnine man who gave the strong impression that managing hotels (or at least the Pretender Hotel) was not for him, did not know; the housekeeper was also ignorant. It would make life harder but it least it would not make it impossible.

She had disposable gloves in her bag, which she now put on. Inside the envelope there was an expensive, gold-plated watch. It was big and heavy and it made a statement about its owner. It was not the kind of watch that you lost in a hotel room and then didn't bother about. When she turned it over, she saw that it was engraved —
A
.
R
. — and Beverley Wharton decided that God was a nice old bugger after all.

She dropped the watch into Forensics as soon as she returned, but did not get the chance to begin making computer searches until the next day. Lambert had gone home, she had finished her shift and the station was relatively quiet. She had already decided that she wasn't going to do this alone; even the advantages brought by computers didn't mean that it wasn't a tedious, boring, largely unrewarding job. She had done more than her fair share of such unthinking automation to know that she would not do it now.

"Lyme?"

Lyme was possibly the most repulsive human being she had ever met, and that included those she had arrested. He exuded a sort of unsavoury odour that poisoned the air and made all around him feel faintly nauseous. He was short and squat, almost of Dickensian proportions and habits, with table manners that were legendarily deficient, and abilities as a policeman that were similarly absent. He was kept out of sight for much of the time, only brought out when strength and sadism were required in abundance.

He looked up from his present task, that of compiling the traffic offence statistics for the past month, and cast a porcine glance in her direction. As usual there was a good percentage of leer in his expression.

No
chance
,
Fatso
.
I'd
rather
be
fucked
by
a
gangrenous
leper
.

"I've got a job for you."

He looked unhappy but he couldn't argue. He looked even more unhappy when she told him what he had to do, "See these names?" she asked, presenting him with the list of hotel guests and delegates. "I want each and every one of them checked for convictions. This one especially." She pointed out Rosenthal.

"What, all of 'em?" he asked, incredulous.

"Every single one of them."

"It'll take me ages." He had a whine in his voice that was constantly being exercised.

"Then you'd better start straightaway, hadn't you?"

He didn't look happy but then, she decided, that wouldn't have helped. Somehow Lyme's very existence suggested that nose picking and arse scratching had an hereditary basis.

She decided to take some light refreshment. When she returned an hour later, he had just finished and was reading a comic.

"Anything?"

"Nope." His tone suggested that he could have told her that at the start.

"What about Rosenthal?"

He smiled the smile that an enemy smiles. "Nothing."

She was used to this. Had it not been the answer she was expecting, she would have been angered by his attitude. As it was, she merely smiled back and said, "If I'd thought it was going to produce anything of worth, I wouldn't have asked a piece of useless pigshit like you to do it."

Which, pending the watch, left her with the company to investigate. She picked up the phone, dialled and then waited for a few moments. "Lucas Hammon, please."