Strange Tide (41 page)

‘I'd come up with another theory: managed suicides. A charismatic, persuasive man convinces vulnerable females that they'd be better off leaving this world. Dalladay is told she can have a fresh start. Curtis is talked into stopping her meds. North – well, I have to say she seems stronger than the other two but perhaps she also had some weakness that could be exploited. People choose to end their lives for reasons other than money. Out of love, for example. Ali Bensaud teaches them—'

‘This is the guy who runs the health courses?'

‘Yes, yes, do keep up – he teaches them about the sacred river and its power to heal their souls. He plays to their fears and doubts about themselves. We need to get to him before we go anywhere else. I wanted us to tackle it together, but I'll have to go it alone. You see, there's something I know that you don't.'

‘You'd better tell me, Arthur.'

‘I'll tell you everything after I've interviewed him.' Bryant glanced at his stopped watch. ‘He's still down at the centre, and there's no time like the present. Can I borrow your car?'

‘No, you certainly can't,' said May. ‘The last time I lent it to you I found the glove box full of maggots.'

‘Ah yes, the lid came off my Brachyceran Diptera. Fear not, I can get the tube.'

‘The unit got into a terrible state without you,' said May as his partner set about taking his leave. ‘Do you really think you're cured?'

Bryant tucked his biscuits into his coat. ‘My head is clear. My brain is sharp. My Tibetan skull is at the bottom of the Thames. I feel like a man at his physical peak so long as I don't look in a mirror.'

May was trying to catch up. ‘Your skull – I'm sorry?'

‘Don't be, I'll fill you in later. I say, you didn't strangle her, did you?'

‘I can't believe you'd ask that. No, of course I bloody didn't.' May looked horrified. ‘This interview. I hope you're going to play it by the book, use some restraint and subtlety.'

‘Certainly not. I'm going to make a total fool of myself. It's the best way to get information.' Bryant thumped his hat, attempting to give it some shape. ‘Right, stay where you are, I'm heading out into dark waters.'

The centre was already facing the loss of its clients as the taint of unsolved crime lapped at its doors. Now Bryant was prepared to stir things up further, especially when the receptionist explained that Mr Thornberry was taking an induction class and wouldn't be able to see him. ‘Don't worry,' said Bryant, flashing his PCU card, ‘I'll sit in on his talk. I have a lot of questions for him. I'm sure you won't mind.'

The receptionist did mind, very much. The man standing there emptying out his pockets in the search for a notebook reminded her of an over-loved Victorian teddy bear. The ladies on the Life Options client list ran book clubs and charities and lunched in garden nurseries along the Thames Valley. The presence of this benign shambles reeking of peppermints and rolling tobacco would surely add to their growing suspicions. ‘Perhaps he could see you at—' she said before looking up from her screen and finding nobody there.

Bryant found a space at the back of the induction room, sat down, blew his nose loudly and opened a box of Liquorice Allsorts. The woman next to him moved her chair away an inch.

Ali Bensaud bounced into the room and began his welcoming address. He perfectly matched the description Janice had provided, moving back and forth before the women with a loping grace that reminded Bryant of a benign leopard. His accent had now been refined in a language school and defied accurate location. Until 1940 most English families had only travelled a short distance, so their intonation could be pinpointed to within a few streets. Bryant knew that dialects broke down into nine broad types, with Received Pronunciation representing the language's gold standard. Non-native English speakers tended to carry over the phonemic inventory of their mother tongue.
North African Arabic
, he decided.
I'll have to tread carefully
.
If he wriggles off the hook I'll never get him back.

It was clear that Ali had constructed his persona with precision and would be wary of traps. He stopped before each of his new clients, first reserved, then light-hearted, then earnest. At the end of the induction the good ladies of the lower Thames Valley dutifully filed out to sign up for classes, and the detective rose to meet his key suspect.

‘A few minutes of your time, if I may?' Bryant wiped his hand on his coat and held it out.

‘We can go in here.' Bensaud shook his hand and led the way to Cassie North's office. ‘My partner is busy dealing with problems arising from the death of her mother, as I'm sure you can appreciate.' He had an easy, affable charm and held the eye with authority.

‘So you know who I am?' Bryant seated himself facing Ali in one of his elegant consultation chairs.

‘Certainly. I would rather have an open, honest discussion with you than have any more officers prowling around the place undercover.'

‘I was very impressed, watching you in there. You use some form of neurolinguistic programming? You think all behaviour has structure that you can learn?'

‘No,' said Ali, unruffled by the question. ‘I just try to put clients at their ease by adopting their natural speech patterns. We use a variety of different therapies to help them with various problems.'

‘What kind of problems?'

‘At the moment we're offering advice on a variety of lifestyle issues, but we'll soon be able to deal with depression, phobias, habit disorders, allergies, learning issues, psychosomatic conditions and so on.'

‘But you're not doctors.'

‘We specialize in the areas that GPs won't cover.'

‘Forgive me, but this is largely pseudoscience, isn't it?' said Bryant. ‘The mind-over-matter thing has been discredited again and again.'

‘Control trials aren't the best way of discovering whether a technique works, Mr Bryant. Our clients would not return if they didn't feel a change in themselves. We receive many unsolicited commendations—'

Bryant knew a clever mimic when he heard one. Ali was spouting jargon like a paid expert fielded by a TV network, but it didn't sound as if he entirely understood what he was saying. ‘Where do your therapies cross over into mysticism?' he asked. ‘Marion North was selling “energy rocks” from here, wasn't she?'

‘Our clients choose from a wide spectrum of therapies, from those with a scientifically quantifiable health basis, like yoga, meditation and stress control, to more psychic energy-based disciplines.'

‘Do you diagnose?'

‘We offer advice.'

‘What was your advice for her?' Bryant pulled Angela Curtis's pill-pot from his pocket and rattled it. ‘I understand she was taking them for depression.'

Ali took the pot and read its label. ‘They were prescribed by her doctor, not by me. She was seeing Marion North.'

‘What happens if you don't think someone has a problem? Do you send them away?'

‘We deal with their perception issues.'

More recited jargon
, thought Bryant. ‘So it's a win-win for you, isn't it?' he said. ‘If they arrive complaining that they're overweight but have a normal BMI, you say let's deal with how you perceive yourself, and – forgive me for mentioning anything so vulgar as monetary gain here – you cream off the ackers.'

Ali was smart enough to realize that he had been caught out. ‘I don't know what that means.'

‘Ah, yes, English as a second language, I forgot. You still get your mitts on the moolah, the dosh, the deep-sea divers, the loot.'

‘I'm not very familiar with this language,' Ali replied, ‘but I assume you're suggesting we're in it purely to make money.' His reply was tinged with just the right amount of snobbery and irritation to pass for gentrified English.

Bryant took out one of the glittery drawings Longbright had filched from the centre. ‘Surely you admit that when it comes to selling “magic” children's daubs and hand-painted lucky rocks the line has been crossed?'

‘People throw coins into wishing wells but it doesn't mean they believe their dreams will come true. If it makes them feel better it's a working therapy.' Ali's brow furrowed. ‘Forgive me but you are not here to get tips on running a business, surely.'

‘Three women have drowned, Mr Bensaud. That is your birth-name, isn't it? It's quite hard keeping up with your identity changes. Two of the dead were your clients and one was your therapist. And here you are running courses in sacred rivers, informing vulnerable clients about the cycle of death and rebirth.'

Bensaud shook his head. ‘You're very much mistaken if you think they're vulnerable, Mr Bryant. They're customers, not patients, and they're buying what they want to hear. I'm not your enemy, I'd like to help you as much as possible.'

‘I'm glad to hear that. Your paternity test for Lynsey Dalladay's child came back positive, in case you were wondering, which is why we're having this conversation.'

‘Yes, I thought it had.' Bensaud sat back with his palms on his thighs and studied his opponent coolly.

‘Don't you think your relationship with her was unprofessional?'

‘There was nothing wrong with her.'

‘But given her background—'

‘She was not helpless or at risk in any way, if that's what you mean. She was healthy and entirely responsible for her actions.'

‘She was pregnant, and you are the father.'

‘You think I deliberately abused any authority I had? She told me she used contraception.'

‘She told you she was pregnant.'

Bensaud looked pained and sat silent for a moment. ‘Yes. But she did not suggest I was the father.'

‘It was lucky she died before she could talk to anyone else,' said Bryant. ‘I mean, from a business perspective. I imagine it would be difficult to get other women to, if you forgive the phrase, open up to you. For example, Angela Curtis—'

‘Mr Bryant, I did not have relations with that woman. She attended one of Mrs North's courses. I had no dealings with her socially.'

‘She's still dead.'

Bensaud held his gaze. ‘You're telling me I'm a suspect.'

‘It sounds as if you're telling me. We'll be interviewing your colleagues and clients and searching the premises, as well as examining all of your online data.'

‘You have a warrant for this?'

‘It will be here first thing tomorrow, so I must ask you to leave everything untouched.'

Ali rose. ‘I'll expect you then. In the meantime I'd like to get on with my work.' He waited for the detective to join him, then left the room first.

As he departed the centre, Bryant rang his partner in Shad Thames.

‘About Bensaud's positive paternity test,' he said, ‘would you like to hear a theory? Marion North was just starting out at the centre. She got a little over-enthusiastic and failed to follow the centre's carefully plotted boundary lines about its holistic-homeopathic advice. She told Angela Curtis to throw away her medication and start buying their manuka honey or whatever. As soon as Curtis did so, her depression went untreated and returned.'

‘Curtis's death occurred earlier than the others,' May pointed out. ‘Could you stand still? You're fading in and out.'

‘I'm trying to get across a road without being knocked down. Listen to me. Perhaps Bensaud failed to follow his own rules. His new power corrupted him; he wouldn't be the first. As for Gilyov, maybe the engineer had something on him.'

‘So Bensaud seduced Dalladay, and when she became a danger to his career he turned to murder. It doesn't sound—'

Bryant would not be moved. ‘As for the contusions, they're either deliberate or accidental. Giles thinks Marion North went over head first and hit the stone wall of the embankment on the way down. Sorry, I'm not exactly sparing your grief.'

‘You're saying that whichever way we go, Bensaud is our man. How do we prove that?'

‘He's not able to acknowledge that he's capable of killing. At the moment we don't have anything on him other than the paternity result.'

‘That's enough to bring him in for formal questioning, Arthur.'

‘And how do you propose we extract a confession, by breaking out the rubber truncheons? He's smart enough to have set you up for murder, John. You didn't see it coming and we won't see it when he vanishes again. There has to be another way of proving his culpability.'

‘So how can you get me off the hook?' asked May,

‘I have a date with Daisy,' said Bryant. He rang off and headed for the tube.

Fraternity DuCaine and Janice Longbright were running out of desk space. Raymond Land's ‘paperless office' initiative had spectacularly failed, and half-eaten trays of dhal, aloo ghobi, chicken korma and beef randang teetered on stacks of overstuffed cardboard folders.