AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season (19 page)

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“You think they’re nicked? That I’m a thief? Reduced to stealing empty cardboard boxes?”

He blinked slow. “Why don’t you just tell me where they’re from?”

“Because the insinuation’s insulting. Why don’t you ask Alex Morrow what I said when
she
asked where the fucking boxes came from?”

Kay watched him look back at his clipboard and realized that he hadn’t known Alex had been up here, on her own. She hadn’t meant to tell on her. A principle was a principle, it couldn’t be a question of how much you liked the person you were applying it to. But he was smart and he knew now.

Outside, in the hall, John shut his bedroom door very firmly. Kay stood up abruptly. “I’m going to ask you to leave now. If you don’t mind.”

She walked out into the hall and leaned over to John’s door, opening it and shoving it wide. “Finished your dinner?”

A pause was followed by John calling in a guilty, sing-song voice, “Finished!”

“Bring your plate out and wash it then.” She glanced back into the kitchen. Marie’s dinner was untouched, congealing on the plate.

The police were in the hall, the man, Harris, putting his clipboard back in his bag. Joe and Frankie came out of their room, Joe carrying the stacked plates and cutlery. She was embarrassed to see that the top plate had been licked clean, big tongue marks around the rim and she saw both police officers looking at the boys critically, sizing them up.

“Well, Mother,” said Joe, oblivious, “another culinary triumph! Is that you guys off?”

Harris didn’t even have the courtesy to look up when Joe spoke to him. His eye shot from Joe to Frankie. “We’ll need to speak to you again.”

“Any time,” said Kay, hating him for looking at her boys like that, head to toe. She took his elbow and pushed him gently towards the door. “Any time at all.”

She shut the door on them and saw them linger there, behind the glass, not speaking. They moved away and she waited until she heard the lift doors open and shut.

From the corner of her eye she saw John’s bedroom door swing very slowly shut.

Furious, she turned to it, kicked it with her foot so it bounced off the wall, and hissed, “I know what you’re doing in there.”

Joe was behind her. “Let him have a wank, Mum, it’s nature’s way.”

Frankie laughed loud at that. She even heard Marie laughing in her room. She hadn’t heard that for months.

Morrow and McCarthy weren’t sure the hotel manager could see them but they could definitely see him: lean and cold, with an attentiveness that was a little overpracticed. He stared unseeing through the webcam, still, as if he was in an Edwardian photographer’s neck clamp. He blinked rarely as he answered their questions about Sarah Erroll, seemed haughty and irritated. Morrow hoped he couldn’t see her too well, she didn’t think she’d pass muster.

Morrow and McCarthy had to speak very, very slowly, to overcome the problem of accents, sieving their language for Scottish words and enunciating their
t
’s. Morrow felt that she was being ridiculous: “WhaT can you tell us abouT SarAh EErroLL?”

He spoke without hesitation, as if he was reading a monologue from an autocue: Sarah Erroll had been a guest at the hotel many times. She had never been anything but a charming guest.
No
, there certainly was
no
suggestion of her engaging in prostitution. She always met with the same gentleman when she came here. Occasionally, he would stay over with her.

“I see,” said Morrow slowly, picking her words for clarity. “By ‘staying over’ you mean sleeping together?”

“That would seem likely.”

“Did you know the man?”

The manager smirked but he actually looked a little offended. “The gentleman called himself ‘Sal Anders.’ That was
not
his real name.”

He left a pause for her to ask, which she found a bit annoying. “What was his real name?”

He gave himself a single disapproving nod. “Lars Anderson. I can tell you now because that gentleman has passed.”

“Passed what?”

He looked confused. “Um, Mr. Anderson died.”

“When?”

“This week?” His disbelief was tangible across the Atlantic. “The story has been in all the newspapers over here. I believe it happened in England.”

“Was he famous?”

“Very famous.” He paused. “Here. He died in
Eng
land.”

“Yeah, we’re in
Scot
land. Scotland’s a different country than England so it’s maybe not a big story here.”

His intelligence insulted, the manager blinked and spoke again, his tone exactly the same as before. “I’m aware of that. This is a very big story, can you really not have read about it? Allied Global Investments? Billions of pounds lost? Lars Anderson?”

Morrow thought she had heard something about that but looked to McCarthy who guessed, “Is he the financial guy?”

“At the center of the financial scandal,” nodded the manager. “He hung himself two days ago. You know, it’s a rumor over here but we heard the British press published photographs of him hanging. We don’t have that kind of press over here. It’s quite different…”

Morrow asked him how he knew the man’s real name was Lars Anderson, had he seen a card or something? The hotel manager shifted in his chair and said it was his business to know such things.

“Do you have any proof it was him though?”

“I have credit card receipts from the hotel shop.”

“In his real name?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he change his name to check in and then pay with his own card?”

He looked very arch at that. “I don’t think that particular gentleman was concerned with keeping his identity a secret. I think it was a token. He was telling
us
to be discreet.”

McCarthy sat up as it came to him. “Oh, aye, I remember he was married?”

“So I believe…”

Morrow began to recap his evidence, making sure they had it right so that they could write it up and fax it over for him for notarization: Sarah and Lars Anderson were having an affair—No. He stopped her dead. It was not a love affair. They may have been sleeping together but this was not a love affair. He bought her a gift from the hotel shop, a bracelet. A lover doesn’t do that. A hotel present means that he remembered her on the way into the hotel, not that he had been thinking about her when he wasn’t with her. Morrow said maybe he was forgetful. His face remained neutral. How did he know the bracelet was for Sarah? He smirked again, genuinely amused this time, because Sarah gave it to the maid as a tip.

“So the relationship was, what? Stormy?”

“Possibly, it was an accommodation…,” he suggested.

Morrow was tiring of him and his subtle social nuances. “What the hell does that mean?”

The manager blinked slowly, tired of her too. “They were using each other.”

“OK.” Morrow stood up. “I’ll let my colleague here recap your statement with you, and he can fax it over for you to sign.”

She left without saying goodbye and went out to the incident room.

Routher was looking over someone’s shoulder, watching them work. “You,” she said, “I want a newspaper search on this name.” She wrote “Lars Anderson” on a scrap of paper and handed it to him. “I want a printout in twenty minutes.” He took it from her.

She went into her office. A scant ten minutes later Routher knocked on the door and came in with today’s newspaper and printouts still warm from the printer.

“I’ve been following this story,” said Routher, excited. “He was a right bad yin.”

Morrow nodded, pretending she’d heard of Anderson, but she wasn’t prone to reading the newspapers.

“Ma’am? See like ‘here’ and ‘hair’? ‘Lars’ sounds like ‘liars.’ ”

She looked at him. He was right. “Good. You’re not a waste of skin.”

Routher smiled, and went to leave.

“Come back here,” she said. “Shut the door.”

Suspicious, he did as he was asked and stood in front of her.

“So,” she nodded at the door behind him, “what’s going on?”

“In what way?” he said stiffly.

“What are you guys plotting?”

His chin trembled and he began to sweat.

“Routher,” she said quietly, “if a face could shit itself then yours just has.”

He didn’t find it funny. He looked as if he might cry.

“Get out,” she said.

He scuttled out and shut the door. He’d go and tell them she knew something was up, might flush something out.

Morrow turned to the first story. She was shocked at the front page showing him hanging from a tree—she didn’t know they could print that. She knew the one rule about reporting suicides was generally not to report them because they encouraged so many copycats.

The sum of the articles seemed to be that Lars Anderson was a City financier who had become the focus of a hate campaign in the press. She read a
Sunday Times
explanation of his scam three times but didn’t understand what he had done to lose so much money; it ran into billions. The most she could gather was that he had given people mortgages at a rate they couldn’t afford, but she didn’t really understand why this made him so evil. She thought maybe the people who took out the mortgages should have checked whether they could afford it.

Whatever he’d been doing, he’d made a lot of money at it. His Kent house was pictured from the air and the ground. There were aerial images of his holiday home in South Africa and estate agent photos of the interior. It didn’t look that nice. His wife was pictured driving, walking, always with dark glasses on, frightened but prim.

Several of the photos of Lars were the same one. She wondered why. There were a few in which he hurried into a car, came out of an office door with his face hidden behind a rolled-up newspaper or hand. But the posed photo was glamorous.

In it, a silver-haired man with a tall forehead stood in front of a manned helicopter. His coat was open, he carried a briefcase and he looked as if he had stopped for a snap to be taken before he got into the helicopter and went somewhere important. It was a carefully set-up photo, he was carefully posed and made up but still his slight belly and raspberry nose weren’t entirely disguised. Lars looked straight to camera, haughty, malevolent. Most people would have smiled and tried to look pleasant, but this was how he wanted the world to see him. She found that telling. The newspapers detailed his wealth and belongings, they seemed dazzled by him.

According to the reports, AGI and his personal bank accounts had been frozen by the fraud office, awaiting investigation. Mrs. Thalaine had mentioned AGI, that’s where she’d heard it before. Two days ago Anderson had left a civil court hearing which disqualified him from ever holding office in a limited company again. A Serious Fraud Office investigation meant that he wouldn’t be able to operate under any capacity. He’d gone straight home and hanged himself. He was found four hours before Sarah Erroll was killed.

Calling up the thumbnails from Sarah’s iPhone, she found the New York pictures of the silver-haired man. It was out of focus but if she squinted she could see it was Lars Anderson.

She picked up her phone, chose an outside line and called the Serious Fraud Office in London. Shut. The message said they were only open until five fifteen. Nice shifts.

A sharp, familiar knock on the door.

“Come in, Harris.”

He opened the door and stuck his face in.

“Harris, you OK for going to London tomorrow? I was trying to make an appointment with the SFO but they’re shut.”

He looked excited, still had his coat on. “Ma’am: Kay Murray’s got antiques in her house, Leonard says they’re worth a lot of money, rare things, and her kids have got matching black suede trainers. She’s as hostile as buggery. We need to get her in.”

Morrow sat in her office, nervously chewing a nipple of raw skin at the side of her mouth. She had a foreboding that something awful and wearing and sad would come out of Kay’s interview, that it would be a keeper.

For Morrow, the cases that kept her burning eyes blinking into the dark were not the bloody ones, not the vicious ones when eyes were gouged or fingers snapped or children hurt. Morrow’s keepers were those where events seemed inevitable, the cases that made her doubt the possibility of justice, the value of what they were doing. Sarah Erroll was starting to feel like that.

She stood up and shook off her sense of dread, opened the door and paused outside the incident room. They were more comfortable now, thinking the end was in sight. The scene-of-crime photos were no longer the focus of anyone’s attention, no one was avoiding it. They thought they had solved it.

Bannerman’s door was open a chink. She knocked and stuck her head in before he had the chance to ask who it was, and was surprised to find him talking to their boss, McKechnie. Morrow didn’t even know he was in the building.

McKechnie was an old-school procedure-priest. A politician, broad around the middle, small about the chin.

Bannerman was leaning over his desk, grinning, McKechnie smug, hands on stomach, leaning back in the hard chair. There was always a bond between them. McKechnie had brought him on and was here to witness his prodigy making the kill at first hand.

“Sir.” She nodded.

“Good work on this, Morrow,” he said, looking to Bannerman for confirmation.

Bannerman smiled encouragingly. “Very good work. Tomorrow, I need Harris here.”

They had already bought Harris’s plane ticket for London and it wasn’t transferable.

“But we’re only going for the morning, we’ll be back mid-afternoon.”

“I want him in the morning. You’ll take Wilder.”

Bannerman was keeping her away from Harris, isolating him. And he was bringing it up in front of the boss so that she couldn’t object, because any complaint would make her part of the rebellion. Without fanfare or warning the war had begun.

“Fine,” she said, blinking to cut him off. “I’m not going into the interviews, sir.”

Bannerman nodded. “I’ve already explained that you know the suspect.”

“No, um,” Morrow held the edge of the door tight, “Murray’s
not
actually a suspect.”

Bannerman nodded a concession. “Point taken: the suspects’ mother. Although,” he looked at McKechnie, “she
may
be a suspect. We’ll have to see when we get up there.”

“And the boys are in the back?”

“Yeah, we’ve sent their shoes off and brought in all the antiques she had kicking around the house.” He explained to McKechnie, “One of our new recruits spotted them on a routine visit.”

He was talking as if they’d found the British Museum up there. Morrow hadn’t seen a lot of antiques in the house. “What was there exactly?”

Bannerman pushed a sheaf of color photos printed on copy paper over his desk towards her. She stepped in and fingered through them.

The ink had smeared a little. That the items were pictured next to a ruler and had an exhibit number next to them made them seem stolen.

The first item was a silver eggcup. It had been found on top of the cupboard in the kitchen, covered in a greasy dust. She could still see the tiny hairs stuck in it at the upper rim.

The next one was an art deco watch with a rectangular face and diamonds on the surround.

“Found that in a sock under her bed,” Bannerman told McKechnie, helping Morrow to the next picture, the site of the discovery. The dust was thick under the bed. Random lost items were scattered around the navy blue carpet, a pair of tights rolled into twin doughnuts, an empty light bulb box, a celebrity magazine. The orange sock was lying by the skirting board.

Then there was a bowl with enameling on the outside. It had been found on the ironing board and was photographed next to a brown burn mark on a vivid flowery pattern. Kay’d been using it as an ashtray. A cursory search of the internet suggested it was worth thousands.

“There’s not that much,” said Morrow, sounding sour.

The men didn’t say anything but she knew what they were thinking about her. It didn’t bother her. She never felt she had their good regard in the first place and she’d be out of here soon. Her hand strayed to her belly for reassurance but she caught herself and dropped it to her side.

Politely, Bannerman changed the subject, looking at McKechnie. “Right?”

McKechnie smiled at his protégé. “Whenever you are.”

They stood up, coming past her at the door; McKechnie happy because a high-profile case was about to be wound up, Bannerman because he was doing the winding. Morrow followed them out at a distance.

A single row of chairs was set out in the remote viewing room, four in all. McKechnie took the middle seat.

“Sir, this is DC Tamsin Leonard. She spotted the ashtray that led to the search.”

Morrow was furious with Leonard. She was wrong to be: Leonard had spotted the bowl, she hadn’t put it there, but she felt angry at her. Overcompensating, she gave Leonard credit when it was usual not to, introducing her to a boss three grades above her, saying her full name.

They sat down, Morrow next to McKechnie, Leonard on his other side.

Routher came in from checking the camera in the interview room and switched on the boxy television, tuning it to camera one.

A fuzz of snow evaporated and the tall narrow room was pictured. The camera was angled towards the door and the two empty facing seats, Bannerman and Gobby seen from behind so their faces were hidden. They busied themselves taking off their jackets, putting the cassette tapes on the table. As Gobby poured three plastic cups of water out, Bannerman turned back and smiled at the camera. It was too flippant for McKechnie—he shifted reproachfully in his seat.

Everyone waited. The room looked suffocatingly small, high walls, a narrow table and two big men sitting on one side, facing the door, waiting and willing the next interviewee to fail.

The door opened slowly and McCarthy’s face appeared. He looked concerned, didn’t speak, seemed to be checking that the chair was there. Kay shuffled in and sat down on the lonely side of the table, clenching her hands on the surface in front of her. She met McCarthy’s look of concern briefly, blinking to let him know she was all right. Morrow wondered if they knew each other.

Kay looked at Bannerman and Gobby in turn. “Hello,” she said formally.

Gobby’s head bobbed. Bannerman reciprocated her civil tone but it sounded facetious. “Good evening, Ms. Murray.” He held the tapes up. “We’re going to put these tapes in the cassette recorder to record the interview.”

Behind Morrow, McCarthy came into the viewing room and pulled a seat out from the wall, watching the TV screen. Morrow looked at him and he raised his eyebrows, asking if it was all right for him to stay. She nodded a yes. He looked back at the screen, frowning, concerned, and Morrow was touched: McCarthy didn’t know Kay. He just liked her.

In the interview room Kay looked around as Bannerman and Gobby undid the cassette wrappers, putting the tapes into the players. Thinking herself unobserved, she seemed to look up, searching for a window, another door, a way out. Her eyes flicked up to the camera. In the second before she saw the red light and realized the camera was on, she looked frantic and cornered.

Bannerman sat back, told the tape who was there, what the day was, where they were. He told Kay that they were filming and might be watched remotely by officers in another part of the station. She looked straight at the camera, eyes hateful, as if she could see her accusers through it.

Morrow blinked at the screen to swipe the brutal glance away.

“So,” Bannerman began. They could see from behind that he was smiling. “You understand why we’re here, don’t you, Kay?”

Kay didn’t smile back. “Because you found things in my house that you don’t think I should have?”

“No.” He broke eye contact. “No, because of Sarah Erroll’s death. That’s why we’re here, because Sarah Erroll was murdered in her house, you had access to that house and her accounts and,” he paused for emphasis, “because you have things in your house that don’t seem to belong to you.”

“Like what?”

“Hmm.” He looked at a sheet of his scribbled notes, opened his folder, flashed a photocopied image of the eggcup at the camera. He decided not to do that bit right now. He shut the folder and looked up. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

McKechnie murmured “oh no” under his breath and Morrow sympathized: Bannerman was going to drag it out. Two hours, by her estimation. That’s how long it took for a suspect to break under prolonged questioning. Two hours of personal details and bus timetables and getting phone numbers slightly wrong before the ennui became unbearable and they gladly put their hands up. It was already five to eleven.

“How did you come to be working for Mrs. Erroll?”

Kay blinked, paused and said, “No,” very firmly. “Let’s not start at the beginning. Let’s get down to the main—”

“No.” Bannerman knew McKechnie was watching. “We’ll start at the beginning—”

“No, we won’t.” She was firm. “And I’ll tell you why: because I’ve got four kids, two of them are down the stairs and they’re terrified, and the other two are sitting in a neighbor’s house and they’ve all got school in the morning.”

“I think this is a bit more important…” His voice was loud.

“Right? See, I don’t.” But hers was louder.

Morrow leaned forward, elbow on knee, her hand pressed over her mouth to cover a smile.

“Because,” continued Kay, “I know what went on. I was there. I know my boys and I know there’s nothing to this.” She might have won the point if she’d pressed it home but, suddenly, her courage failed her. A bubble of panic seemed to rise through her chest, pushing her back in the chair, twisting her voice to a weak whine. “And I know you’re going to find that out. And you’re going to let my boys go home. And get some sleep.” She was crying, her face contorted. She slapped a hand over her eyes, shook, her mouth contorted wide.

“There’s no need to be afraid.” Bannerman sounded annoyed.

Kay kept her eyes covered and caught her breath. “The fuck are you talking about?”

It wasn’t the floor wipe McKechnie had been expecting. He had stopped looking at the screen and was checking the crease on his trousers.

Mouth bubbling, eyes wet, she dropped her hand. “There’s every fucking reason to be afraid.”

“What have you done, Kay? You can tell us.”

“No! I’m not.” She stopped to wipe her nose on the back of her hand. “I’m not scared because I’ve done anything. I’m scared because
I don’t trust you
. Any of ye. And I know I’ve done nothing and my boys have done nothing and I
don’t trust ye
to find that out.”

It was a bad start. Bannerman hadn’t expected Kay to be so articulate. He sat back heavily, watched her give a shuddering sniff. When she had calmed down he said quietly, “Let’s start at the beginning.”

Kay sniffed again, terror subsiding and anger setting in.

“How did you get the job with Mrs. Erroll?”

Kay licked her lips and looked around the table top. She looked at the camera, she looked at Gobby and then at Bannerman. “OK,” she conceded, “here ye are: I worked at Mrs. Thalaine’s and the Campbells’ doing cleaning. I met a cleaner called Jane Manus, young lassie, another cleaner, on the train station platform one night and she said Sarah Erroll was advertising for carers for her mother—”

“Who is Jane Manus?”

“—ten quid an hour. So I missed my train and went up the house and knocked and Sarah answered and I said to her, I heard you’re advertising, I don’t have any qualific—”

“Who is Jane Manus?”

“—qualifications
or
experience. But I’m a grafter and I like old folk. Gave me a tryout. I worked for nothing for three days. Half shifts. And me and Mrs. Erroll got on well and she gave us the job.”

Morrow glanced beyond McKechnie to Leonard and saw a tiny smile on her face as she took Kay’s side.

“Miss Murray, you don’t understand what happens here.” Bannerman held a stilling hand out to her. “I ask the questions and you answer the questions because this is a matter of us collating information. We know what we need to ask—”

“You need my whole work history?”

“We need
context
.”

Morrow had seen him do this before: he was using words he assumed Kay wouldn’t understand. The split second it took someone to work out the meaning gave him the advantage, made them lose their conversational footing. But he hadn’t the measure of Kay at all. She was sharp and thought fast.

“You can get context from someone else. I’ve got responsibilities. I need this to be quick,” she said.

“Well,” he chuckled unpleasantly, “I think it’s fair to say that our needs take precedence here. We’re conducting a murder inquiry—”

“And I’m helping you with that. I’m happy to help.”

“You don’t seem happy.”

At that Kay looked at him with eloquent disgust. “And who would be happy? My sons are downstairs waiting to be asked about this. Fifteen and sixteen. They shouldn’t even know these things go on. And don’t you dare show them any mucky photos of dead people. I’ve spoken to you guys four times already, this is my fourth time talking to you—”

“Third time.” He checked his notes. “We’ve only spoken to you three times. DC Harris and DC Leonard came out to your house, you met Morrow and Wilder in the avenue and now this.”

Kay sat back and sucked her cheeks in, glanced at the camera.

“Are you prone to exaggeration, Kay?”

She said nothing and Bannerman felt he’d found a weakness. “Did you exaggerate how rich Sarah was when you spoke about her to your boys? You must miss the money she was paying you?” He left a pause. “Did you know there was money in the house?”

“No.”

“That’s not true, is it, Kay? You certainly knew where some of the money was. You paid the other women wages in cash. You’ve filled out the accounts book, we compared your handwriting.”