A Ghost at the Door (20 page)

‘The Oxford University Junior Croquet Club!’ she exclaimed in surprise.

‘Precisely. Although that sounds a little too formal. We used to call ourselves the Aunt Emmas. It’s a technical term suggesting that we took the game rather less seriously than some
others.’

‘Croquet has technical terms?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

So Harry had been right. Good cop, Harry, right down to the scar on his left buttock she’d seen peering out at her from beneath his hospital gown. But in the same flash of understanding
she grew confused: no way was this man anyone in the photograph, not for all the fifty years that had passed since it had been taken.

‘So the members of the Aunt Emmas were in some sort of insider-trading ring? A cartel?’

‘It was an intellectual cartel, if you want to give it a label. It’s important that you understand the nature of elites, Inspector, for these people were undoubtedly an elite, the
very best and brightest whose parents had betrayed the world, then condemned it to stultifying postwar mediocrity. They knew things could be different and set out to prove it. They met to exchange
views and opinions, as old friends would, but they were also highly competitive. And in a competitive world money seems always to become the final arbiter, the measure of success. They were all in
positions where they were recipients of confidences – that’s the nature of elites – but it got to the point where those confidences were broken by being shared with each
other.’

‘Even Susannah Ranelagh?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Even Susannah Ranelagh. Oh, yes, a tiny shrew of a woman in so many ways but quite exceptionally bright. People underestimated her. She arrived in Bermuda with a respectable tranche of
money, passed around a little of that money to establish herself as a paragon of all the maidenly virtues, then confirmed her saintliness by helping raise money for high-profile charities. In the
course of all those good works she would meet most of the biggest players on the island. It was a favourite saying of hers that the biggest dicks always like to expose themselves. So she tripped
over an enormous amount of useful information.’

‘
Inside
information,’ Delicious insisted.

‘Well, I suppose some might call it that, but nothing you’d ever be able to prosecute in a court of law. I don’t have to tell you that Bermuda is a place of quiet money. Nobody
likes to make a fuss. But listen carefully and you could hear the whispers, the bragging, who’s on the way up and who’s heading for the fall. She was like the Miss Marple of the money
game and in her own quiet way would see things more clearly than almost anyone. She had a close friend who worked in a senior position in one of the banks and who advised her on likely charitable
targets, clients who were about to receive a windfall of some sort. And she’d be invited to the governor’s mansion, take tea with the island’s high and mighty. There are always
those who want some sort of medal, some trinket or other in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and she had a reputation for having the ear of the governor on such nonsense. So they would confide
in her. Tell her things they’d never tell another soul. She said there was more horseshit deposited around the governor’s roses than in any other garden in the kingdom.’

Delicious sat in the afternoon sunshine transfixed. She was a police officer, she dealt with car crashes and drug dealers and the occasional gang fight. She’d never had tea with the
governor.

‘What she and her old university friends did didn’t seem illegal, not at first. It was nothing more than a game of intellectual arrogance. But almost without their knowing a line was
crossed and by then it was too late to turn back. Anyway, elites don’t turn back. You press the logic of success to its conclusion and don’t give a damn for the morality of the
masses.’

‘Susannah Ranelagh?’ she whispered in astonishment.

He sighed. ‘There was a price to be paid, of course. You don’t understand that when you’re young, you think you’re immortal. But none of us are.’

‘So she’s dead.’ There was something in his tone as well as his words that made Delicious certain.

‘It all started with one of the group – her name was Christine Leclerc. A stellar woman, there was nothing she couldn’t have achieved in life, anything from president of
Renault to president of the French Republic, but she was brought up in the French bureaucratic tradition and ended up in the European Commission. Now, there’s an insider-trading deal if ever
there was. Not since the Triumvirate in Ancient Rome divided the spoils after Caesar’s murder have so few made so much from so many. But when she was killed – entirely accidentally, I
should add – the rest of the group panicked. Realized they were vulnerable. Had she left behind anything that might incriminate them? They needn’t have worried, of course: Brussels
doesn’t wash its underwear in public. But it raised the question. Who would be next? What might they leave behind? Old age is odd, particularly for elites. Makes them impatient, with rules
and, in this case, with each other. And Susannah became a liability.’

Delicious sat, her mind reeling, breathless as the world floated past. A curious sparrow hopped onto the table in search of crumbs. She tried to brush it away but somehow all her energies were
focused on what he was saying and what it all could mean.

‘An endangered species, the sparrow,’ he said, observing. ‘More than half of London’s sparrows have disappeared. But so are we all, all endangered.’

There was hidden meaning wrapped up in his words that she was struggling to decode.

‘That’s why Susannah was killed. She was weak, couldn’t take the pressure, the questions. Would have let everyone down. And perhaps you’ve already worked out that’s
why her house was burned, in case she’d left anything behind.’

Delicious felt almost overwhelmed by what was being thrown at her. She struggled to form the words, knowing she was about to understand everything. ‘How? How was she killed?’

He paused, held her stare, for what seemed like forever. The words, when they came, were delivered individually, with precision, like the sound of distant cannons. ‘In the same way I have
killed you.’

She jumped as she heard his words but only inside. Nothing moved, she tried to shout but produced no more than a croak, she screamed but it echoed endlessly inside.

‘You shouldn’t have come here, Inspector, stirring things up. No good was to come of it.’

She fought, with all the strength she had, in fury, in fear.

‘Don’t worry, it’s entirely painless,’ he said softly.

Painless? You motherfucker! I’m drowning in here!

He was talking but she was no longer paying much heed, catching only snippets. He was leaning forward, staring, examining her, like a doctor, but her mind was elsewhere, reacting to the signals
that were flashing in alarm from her body. She was paralysed, sitting in the chair, her hand on her phone, her back towards anyone who might help her. As she returned his stare she found she could
no longer even blink. And slowly her eyes were drying in the heat, the shapes they saw growing confused, the colours cracking, the world breaking into fragments of searing sunlight. The tear ducts
were drying. She could feel one final teardrop trickling down the flesh of her cheek.

That was the point when she knew, for certain, that she was dying. Her first reaction was one of desperate anger. No, this wasn’t right! Not yet! There was still too much left for her. She
was only thirty-four. She fought, as she had done all her life, tried to kick out in fury, but nothing moved, tried to focus all her strength and coordination into her hands, but it produced only
the smallest tremor that faded as soon as it emerged. Then she grew afraid.

She began to beg for help, for a chance of life. She still had a twelve-year-old son to raise, Marley, by herself. He came first, as he had done ever since his father had walked out and left
them on their own. Please, whoever you are, whatever I’ve done to offend you, change your mind, take pity. Please, take pity on me . . .

He was no longer staring at her. His attentions were focused on wiping her glass to remove all traces of his fingerprints, just as he would take his own glass away with him to destroy every
trace of his presence. He seemed calm, methodical, like a butler cleaning up after a successful dinner party. Then the sun destroyed the last fragments of her eyesight. She could take in only
sounds, final moments: the last trickle of breath escaping her body, the frantic yammering of her panicking heart, the imploding of lungs drowning in fear, the laughter of children at play in the
park and the scraping of a chair as he got up and left.

No one bothered Delicious. The terrace was busy, the staff scurrying after other customers, the tourists on the pathway below passing by, oblivious. If they looked up and saw
anything it was no more than a woman resting in the sun. Lucky girl. Only the sparrow seemed to take an interest, hopping onto the table, fluttering its feathers in hope of attracting interest and
crumbs. It was a considerable time before the waitress, a shy girl recently arrived from Estonia, approached Delicious to reclaim the table. Something wasn’t right. The sparrow had left a
fresh blob of guano beside her hand, yet she hadn’t moved. Fast asleep, perhaps. Then the young waitress saw the sticky, sightless eyes gazing into nowhere, dropped the tray with all its
crockery and fled screaming. Afternoon tea in the park was cancelled.

It was only minutes before two constables in a patrol car pulled up on the pathway. Very quickly they called for backup. It wasn’t simply that the body was so young that aroused their
suspicions, nor even the Bermudan Police ID they found in her handbag. The main problem was that her lifeless hand was on her phone and it seemed she’d been trying to dial 999 but managed
only the first two digits. Anyway, Downing Street was only a dog bark distant, far too close to take anything for granted, so, before the geese had time to honk in protest a Murder Investigation
Team had arrived, the onlookers had been pushed back and the restaurant cordoned off behind police tape.

The phone became a crucial piece of evidence. It showed its last contact as being with a man the call log identified only as Harry. He was on his way to meet up with her. It showed he’d
been in touch almost since the moment she’d arrived in Britain.

Police coverage of the Westminster area is handled out of Charing Cross police station, the stucco-fronted building on Agar Street that Delicious had left less than two hours previously. It
didn’t take long for the names of Inspector Hope and a man named Harry to circulate and reach the ears of DCI Hughie Edwards. The name of Susannah Ranelagh followed only moments behind. It
was a perfect storm for the DCI, a combination of events that threatened to turn his world upside down and drown him. Yet on the other hand, if he played it right, it might just mean that promotion
to superintendent that the arse-wipers had denied him twice already. He’d always reckoned he deserved a super’s job. His papers were in for it again, one last throw of the dice. It
would mean a much better pension, a bigger lump sum. It would also mean taking a few risks but that’s what good coppers did – at least the ones who pulled in the results. He swore most
colourfully, sat at his desk with his head in his hands impugning Harry’s parentage for several minutes. Then he went to see his boss, the chief superintendent.

It took only a few more minutes after that for Harry’s phone to spring into life.

‘Harry, where are you?’

‘Hi, Hughie. I’m sitting beneath a plane tree in Dean’s Yard ogling a couple of Italian tourists.’

‘Stay there. You sodding stay there. Don’t you dare bloody move.’

Then the phone went dead.

Dean’s Yard is an unexpected corner of Westminster, a secluded quadrangle in the lee of the twin towers at the western end of the Abbey. It was once a medieval monastery
and now forms part of the estate of Westminster School. The boys play football on the grass and even claim to have invented the game, while in summer when they’ve packed their trunks and
buggered off to Benidorm the area turns a profit by offering tea and cake to weary travellers. Dean’s Yard is no stranger to lawlessness. In medieval times the area around the Abbey was
renowned for a noisome mix of debauchery and rampant criminality – it contained countless brothels, was the site of murders and insurrection and near at hand was a quarter named Thieving
Lane, rumoured to be the site on which HM Treasury is now built. Dean’s Yard was used to claim the ancient right of sanctuary from arrest and was ideal for the purpose. It has restricted
access and so proved ideal to repel attack from bailiffs. By the same token it made it a bloody difficult place from which to escape.

Even from within the Yard Harry could hear the commotion, the sound of sirens wailing back and forth outside the walls. Then the sirens stopped their rushing and instead were parked insistently
close at hand. Harry was sitting at a table beneath the shade of the trees when he saw policemen beginning to pour through the gates at both ends of the Yard. They were in a hurry, like eels
swarming between the reeds; a table was knocked over, a woman screamed, a child began to cry. It took Harry a second before he realized that every single one of the policemen was headed for him. As
he sipped from his mug of tea he found that a forest of dark-blue bulletproof jackets and helmets had sprung up around him, sprouting Heckler & Koch muzzles. Nine-millimetre cartridges.
He’d seen what one of those could do. A neat and subdued hole in the chest that could blast through the spine and leave a hole like a whale bite in the back. An angry whale. The mug of tea
froze to his lips as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Then the forest parted and the substantial form of DCI Hughie Edwards emerged.