A Ghost at the Door (21 page)

‘Hello, Harry,’ he said, yet with no welcome in his voice.

‘What the hell’s going on, Hughie?’

‘You’re coming to help us with our enquiries.’

‘Into what?’

‘The sudden and very unexpected death of your friend, Inspector Hope.’

There were more words, about his being arrested, about his not having to say anything, about what he did say being used in evidence, but Harry heard none of it. He was frozen. What was left of
his tea was slowly trickling onto his trouser leg, but he didn’t move, didn’t even notice. He didn’t flex a muscle until he was hauled to his feet by two oversized policemen clad
in body armour. They tried to handcuff him but it wouldn’t work, not with his cast. Edwards shook his head in resignation and Harry was bundled into a waiting patrol car.

‘How the hell can you think I had anything to do with her death?’ Harry spat.

‘Which of the dozen compelling reasons do you want me to get to first?’ Edwards replied. His eyes were full of storm and suspicion, like a gale blowing off Swansea Bay, and it had
taken all trace of their friendship with it.

They were facing each other in an interview room at Charing Cross. The atmosphere was recycled, the floor worn, the walls painted in two different shades of ageing magnolia. A sergeant sat
beside the DCI while Theo van Buren, Harry’s solicitor, was next to his client. Harry’s clothes had been taken from him for forensics and replaced by a one-piece white romper suit
manufactured from recycled bottle tops. The two sides were separated by a table whose veneer was distinctly chipped. So was the civility.

‘We’d like to know what grounds you have for holding my client,’ van Buren insisted.

Edwards began counting off on his thick fingers. ‘Your client knew the deceased. He was involved in a serious ongoing investigation that had brought Inspector Hope to Britain. He met the
inspector at her hotel within hours of her arriving in this country. He was the last person to make contact with her on her phone. They had arranged to meet. He was in the area at the time she
died.’ He’d run out of fingers. ‘You think that’s enough for us to be getting on with?’

‘You don’t know for a fact she was murdered,’ the solicitor replied.

‘And I don’t know there’s not a Santa Claus but I’m working on the assumption that it’s a pretty safe bet.’

‘Hughie, I want to help you as much as I can.’ Harry interrupted the professional jousting. ‘Delicious was a friend. A close friend, I think. And I’ll save you the
trouble by betting every bottle in the brewery that she was murdered.’

‘So why d’you suppose the lady was murdered, Mr Jones?’

‘She was looking for Susannah Ranelagh. Both of us were. And we both believed Miss Ranelagh is dead.’

‘Another body? Just drags you in deeper.’

‘I believe she was here this morning, discussing the case.’

‘I know she was. With me.’

‘Then you know what I’m saying is true.’

‘What I know, Harry’ – it was the first time he’d used his Christian name or deigned to accept that there was anything other than formal hostility between the two of them
– ‘is there’s something deeply unpleasant going on here. Smells like a sewer, so it does, and you’re right in it up to your neck. So why don’t you tell us all about
it?’

‘You know my interest in Susannah Ranelagh.’

‘Do I?’ An eyebrow arched in warning. Ah, of course, that was the reason for the edge in Edwards’s tone. The DCI was in this mess, too, if not up to his neck then at least up
to the hole in his trouser pocket. They both knew that with hindsight he should never have shared anything with Harry privately, yet there was nothing to be gained for either of them by admitting
to it. So it had never happened. ‘Why don’t you start from the beginning?’ Edwards suggested, leading the witness onto safer ground.

So they sat and spoke, for more than an hour, about Susannah Ranelagh, and about Bermuda, although Harry decided to talk only in the gentlest terms concerning his father. The more complicated
this got, the longer it would take him to dig his way out from beneath the avalanche of circumstance and suspicion that was threatening to bury him.

Search squads don’t knock, not in murder cases. Their task is to secure evidence that might be flushed away in seconds, so protecting feelings comes way down the list.
Often they will simply batter down the door but there was no need for that in Harry’s case: they had his keys. Even so, they didn’t hang around or waste time on common courtesies. They
were investigating a probable murder, of a police colleague; anyway, they had no idea someone else was in the apartment. They swarmed through the front door and into the living room to find the
windows open, a fan pushing around the thick evening air, and Jemma sitting at the table wearing nothing but a thin cotton crop-top and knickers. Some women would have screamed, others fled to the
bathroom, a fair few fainted, but Jemma had her own ways. She sprang to her feet and started shouting at them to get out of her fucking home before she called the
Daily Mail
. The leader of
the search team, a detective inspector, wilted beneath the broadside, taking a step back and ushering forward a female colleague.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ Jemma stormed, climbing into a T-shirt that was hanging from the back of a chair, any awkwardness entirely swept aside by her
anger.

‘Harry Jones lives here,’ the DI declared, a trace of uncertainty in his voice. His last bust had got entirely the wrong address and left him drowning in paperwork for a month.

‘This is my apartment,’ Jemma spat in return.

‘But . . . he lives here.’

‘So what?’

He waved his warrant card at her. ‘So we’re going to look around.’

‘You got a search warrant?’

‘Don’t need one.’

‘I’ve got cockroaches with better manners than you.’

‘We tried to call.’

‘You didn’t even ring the bloody bell!’

‘The Police and Criminal Evidence Act allows us to search the premises of an arrested person.’

‘Arrested?’ The flame inside Jemma began to flicker in uncertainty. The DI held out a sheet of paper spelling out her rights but she ignored it. ‘What’s he done
now?’ she asked, sinking back into her chair.

‘Mr Jones has been arrested on suspicion of murder.’

And the flame was gone. ‘Murder? You can’t be serious. Who?’

‘A female officer of the Bermuda Police Force. Delicious Hope. An inspector. You know her, by any chance?’

‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

‘Not until we’ve checked it.’ The DI nodded to his colleagues and seconds later she could hear the banging of bathroom cupboards and the rattling of bottles and containers. The
cistern lid was lifted, the system flushed, the rubbish bin rifled. Through the open door she watched them poking through her box of tampons.

They moved to the bedroom, where they pulled back the duvet, examined the sheets for God knew what, poked around in the cupboards, took some of Harry’s clothes and all the dirty linen,
including her own. When one of the uniformed policemen pulled at the top drawer in the chest it slid straight out and emptied her underwear over his shoes. He retrieved it with a glance of
embarrassment and apology.

They spent a lot of time in the spare bedroom, which was used as an office. They took the computer hard drive, his laptop, her laptop, too, despite her protests. ‘That’s
mine.’

‘Not for the moment it’s not.’

An exhibits officer made a record of everything.

Then they asked for her mobile phone. She found it in the bottom of her bag and handed it across. It was switched off, had been all day, and perhaps that had been a mistake. She always switched
it off while at school, then after work she’d shared a glass of wine with a girlfriend as she tried to make sense of the emotional jumble of her life. Hadn’t wanted distractions from
anyone, and particularly Harry.

A constable switched the phone on. ‘No sign of any details for Inspector Hope, Guv,’ he announced, scanning the records. ‘But there’s voicemail.’ Without asking
permission he played the messages over the speaker. Three were from Theo van Buren, asking her to call him urgently. One was a lengthy monologue from her mother complaining about a vet’s bill
for the cat. A message from the police proving they had tried to call. And there was Steve’s voice, low, soft, a little cautious, thanking her for the previous night, his ingratiating tone
leaving little doubt as to what he was grateful for and expressing the hope they could do it all again. ‘Again. And again!’ he said, chuckling as he rang off.

It left an uncomfortable silence in the room.

‘Erm, Mr Jones, is he going through any emotional turmoil, perhaps?’ the DI asked.

If eyes threw spears he knew he’d have been pinned halfway up the wall and bleeding through his socks. She said nothing.

After they had left, carrying computers and clothes and other pieces in plastic evidence bags, Jemma was left to sit, alone, a sweat of fury trickling beneath her shoulder blades and down her
spine. She felt humiliated but, even more than that, she felt violated. By the police. Because of Harry. She wondered if she could ever again feel clean in this apartment, or in their relationship.
‘Why, Harry? Why?’ she muttered as she tore off her T-shirt and headed for the shower.

Alcatraz must have been more fun than this, he thought, when he stirred the following morning, stiff from a night of restlessness on an inadequate mattress covered in heavy-duty
plastic. The custody cell at Charing Cross was totally charmless, stripped of any comforts. Four solid walls covered in scratches of graffiti, a bare and easily scrubbable floor, a high window and
a concrete plinth just wide enough to take the plastic mattress. The door was steel and when it closed made the sound of a falling guillotine. Yet the cell seemed the least of his troubles. He
hoped he wouldn’t be kept here long – Hughie Edwards would surely establish he couldn’t be involved – but the death of Delicious had left him twisting in agony. He was the
reason she’d come to Britain, him and his father and Susannah Ranelagh. He liked her, they made sparks together, could have become lifelong friends in this life, let alone the next. Now she
was dead. His fault.

And he hadn’t seen Jemma in days, hadn’t talked with her in weeks. That was probably his fault, too. But where the hell had she been these last couple of nights? Staying over at a
friend’s, punishing him, making him sweat, it was that sort of passion and unpredictability that he loved, but even so . . .

Would he have had sex with Delicious if his phone hadn’t begun to ring? He’d never know, not now. But as he considered his own shortcomings he began to realize that his early release
might not be as easy as he’d anticipated. If he’d had sex with her his DNA would’ve been all over the place, but even so it wouldn’t take Hughie’s men long to discover
that he’d visited her hotel and spent some time in her room. Men in plaster casts tend to attract attention. And then there had been their long and final embrace. Her DNA over his clothes,
with Hughie Edwards jumping to all the wrong conclusions. Jemma would jump to the wrong conclusion, too; damn it, in her current mood he might have to ask the DCI to keep him locked up for his own
protection.