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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Edge
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Unlikely, but he didn't doubt Z. He wondered if Jennifer Hoad had hidden it there or someone had later tidied it away. He waved thanks for being allowed past and went on down towards the Manor, driving round to the rear where he found the mobile home parked behind a 4x4 and Mrs Plumley seated on the steps reading a paperback book.
He took his time getting out, conscious of her eyes following him. When he presented his ID she smiled. ‘I had you pointed out at the station. I'm sure you know who I am.'
‘Daniel Hoad's maternal grandmother.'
‘Precisely. What can I do for you?'
‘Fill me in a little more about the family. Explain, if you can, why anyone should want to do this to the family.'
‘I can't. Nor can I understand how anyone could even consider such savagery. It defies belief.'
The round eyes in his wooden-puppet face were taking her all in. He didn't miss the title of the book in which she was marking her place with a surprisingly elegant forefinger. One of those portly women, he recognised, blessed with shapely legs ending in dainty feet, and with small hands to match.
‘So you're reading up on the subject?'
‘Ah, this.' She wagged the paperback casually. ‘Found it in the boy's bookcase. Quite some years since I read it myself. An interesting study. Do you know it?'
‘Not the book. Know the case, of course. Who doesn't? Charles Manson and the Sharon Tate murders.'
‘Yes. A period crime classic.
Music, Mayhem, Murder.
The book gives a rational assessment of the man: obsessed by Beatlemania, stoned out of his mind, fed on pseudo-scientific, quasi-mystical superstition. Guru to a team of degenerates, LSD freaks, he was the prophet of doom, convinced a black uprising would end in rape, terror, carnage of the whites. Wanted to be the one to save creation, whether as Christ or Antichrist didn't matter. Simply the evil of the crazed, overblown self. At base a frustrated, pathetic soul soured because he felt his music was under-appreciated.'
‘I guess I know more about what he finally did than what he was.
‘Which is how we all feel about the Twin Towers perpetrators. Every now and again stuff happens, as the saying goes. We face horrific deeds, fail to comprehend what possesses human creatures to commit such inhuman acts.'
‘And that's how you feel about what happened here? I was hoping you could shed some light. Was there no way at all you could see this coming?'
She laid the book down on the steps and stood up, coming towards him. ‘Sergeant, I am almost as much a stranger in this place as you are. I should have kept in touch. They were all that was left in this world of my blood. It is too late even for regrets. My business now is to stand by my grandson, do what I can to support him.'
‘Was there some reason you kept away?'
‘A long-standing difference with my daughter. She considered I always took her husband's side and opposed her.'
‘So it was a divided marriage, husband and wife at loggerheads?'
‘Not openly. There were differences of emphasis, of standards. Frankly, my daughter was a wanton. Freddie deserved something better than to be used as a chequebook, but he accepted the way things were. Not that I ever believed their lives could end in such a tragic way.'
‘End because of their differences?' He wasn't sure that she had implied that.
‘Oh no. This is something else. What happened arose from some totally unrelated cause. I'm convinced of that. I wouldn't have spoken out otherwise.'
‘Does your grandson think the same?'
‘He doesn't know what to believe. He's avoiding thinking at all at the moment. I was just going to call him in for some coffee. Will you join us?'
She went to fetch Daniel while Beaumont riffled through the pages of the paperback. The boy arrived with his hands still wet from rinsing them under the garden tap, and there were fragments of bark clinging to his sweater. ‘Been topping up the kindling for Gran,' he excused himself. His palms were red and sore-looking.
Beaumont kept his questions to a minimum, mainly concerning the date he'd booked for scout camp and who ran the show.
‘Do you have to bother them?' the boy demanded. ‘I'd rather they weren't dragged into family matters.'
‘Probably shan't need to,' Beaumont allowed. ‘We already know where you were that weekend. Routine questions we're obliged to ask everyone. Even your grandmother, while I'm at it.'
She shrugged. ‘My alibi? I don't think I've got one. Home alone. My husband's down in Devon, fishing. I never go along. Sitting on a bank and waiting bores me to distraction, and he deserves a little time on his own.'
‘Can you remember phoning anyone? Watching some TV programme?'
‘I'd a heap of ironing to do. I'd left it to Friday night, and ran a couple of CDs while I was at it: Mahler and the Max Bruck Violin Concerto. Then I had supper and went to bed, sleeping through until almost four when the height of the storm reached us. It brought a tree down across the road about fifty yards from the house. Quite a crash.' Her gaze swept the caravan's interior. ‘Thank heaven it missed this.'
Zyczynski was met at Miradec Interiors, Knightsbridge, by the person she had spoken to on the telephone. Until then she was uncertain as to his sex. His name was Hilary Durham, sleek and practised by voice, but less so in appearance.
He had tried hard. The suit was right, his silk shirt expensive, but despite that his efforts with them were incompetent. His collar bagged at the neck, the tie was knotted too tightly, his cuffs – too long – showed old stains inexpertly laundered. And then there was his hair, the colour and texture of straw, mostly greased flat but defiant at the crown, so that he reminded her of a tufted duck.
He apologised for the absence of Jennifer Hoad's PA, delayed in Paris, tying up loose ends. Mrs Hoad's death had been so unexpected they were all caught out, so to speak.
‘So there's a French connection,' Z commented with apparent innocence.
‘We have an office in France, yes. It deals with continental art imports. Not my department. I'm responsible for the planning and overseeing of work in hand. Well, I trained as an architect, but never sat my finals. Too much accountancy and law involved. Wanted to get to the nitty-gritty, if you know what I mean. Mrs Hoad called me her “Ideas Man”.'
‘She valued you, then.'
‘I like to think so.' For all that, he looked uncertain. Z had never seen a man actually wring his hands but Durham was on the brink of it, clasping them together now as the words tumbled out, then beating one fist into the other palm until jerking them nervously apart like a small child reprimanded for a nasty habit.
‘And what was Mrs Hoad's own function?'
‘She made the contacts and ran the business side. She was very good with the clients. And she had wonderful taste.'
Z could believe that: the office was proof of it. An elegant archway led into a salon with off-white leather sofas and three giant screens, presumably for viewing videos of decor on offer.
The walls were covered in matt paint: one jade, one turquoise, one muted orange. Vegetation overflowing high-gloss ceramics suggested rape of a tropical rain forest.
‘Did Mrs Hoad have a business partner?' Z asked. ‘I mean, who's in charge now?'
He turned a tortured face to her. ‘There's nobody. That's what we need to know. What's going to happen to the company? We could all be out of a job.' His long, unhappy features flickered with angst.
‘Don't worry. The executors will arrange to keep everything going until they find what arrangements Mrs Hoad had made.'
But were there any? Jennifer, fully occupied with the enjoyment of life had had no intention of yielding to untimely death. So what need for contingency plans? So far there had been no will lodged with their solicitor in Aylesbury.
The phone rang on the smaller of the two executive desks. Stuttering excuses, Hilary Durham scuttled towards it, halted with a hand over the instrument and seemed to pull himself straighter before venturing to answer. He took a deep breath and produced the sleek, practised voice Z too had heard over the phone.
He seemed to know his subject. Without consulting any catalogue he reeled off details of ornamental coving and fireplaces, gave advice, and appeared to placate what had been a doubtfully aggrieved client with a promise to visit next day.
Leaving him to it, Z moved into the salon and gazed through the broad, smoked-glass window into the road outside. A silver satin-finish Porsche had just driven into the vacant parking place opposite and a young man got out, flipped his jacket from the passenger seat and dived through the doorway of Miradec Interiors. His quick glance around took in the situation. He beamed on Zyczynski. ‘How may I help you?'
May, not can: Z liked that. His appearance was as studied as his choice of words. Even as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his impeccable jacket it was for effect: boyishly caught out being casual, almost intimate.
‘You may tell me a few things I need to know about your
company,' she told him, opening her wallet to display her ID.
‘Police. Oh God, Jennifer! It's about her, then?' His dark, handsome face crumpled.
‘And whatever you can tell me about the business.'
He stared past her, considering. ‘That's the simpler part. Jennifer herself was more complex. Look, take a seat. I'll get Hilary to run out for some coffee now he's stopped wittering on. There's a Starbucks almost next door. How do you like yours?'
‘A large espresso, please.'
‘Good. Two, then. I can't stand all that foaming milk on my lips that you get with cappuccino. Danish or muffin or something creamy?'
‘Thank you, no.' She walked across to one of the leather sofas and sat squarely in the middle. ‘Would you tell me who you are and how you fit in?'
He lifted a Swedish bentwood chair from a corner of the room, carried it across and sat on it facing her. ‘I'm Justin Halliwell, Jennifer's partner. At least I'm that if she got round to making it official. There's a big difference, I guess.'
‘Now that Mrs Hoad's …'
‘Dead,' he completed. ‘God, I can't believe it. She was so vital, lived every moment to the full. And not just dead, but – but savagely murdered.'
He was badly shaken, or a superb actor.
He sat hunched, forearms on knees, clasped hands dangling between, staring at the floor. Z was free to observe his dark curls cut close like her own, but his black while hers were a warm brown. On his face, too, the same black in his brows and the stylish, fine, bracketing line left unshaven from upper lip to chin. He was trendy, confident, took trouble with his appearance. Did that make him unusually vain? He was clearly Hilary Durham's role model, however incompetently imitated.
‘So, if not her partner, what then?'
‘Originally her PA.' He flashed her a wide smile. ‘That means I shadowed Jennifer, represented her when she was elsewhere. Like any good PA, I was allowed to copy her signature.'
‘I hope you can recognise the difference, especially on contracts and cheques; for when the auditors come in. I understood you were in Paris.'
‘Running our office there. Until I heard what had happened to the Hoads.'
‘When were you informed?'
‘On Monday. I'd gone down to Geneva about an order for laminates. It was on my answerphone when I got back. Hilary, weeping his heart out.'
‘And today's Thursday.'
‘I came as soon as I could. There was stuff to attend to first.' He was beginning to sound needled. Not impressed by a CID sergeant? Or perhaps unhappy at being interrogated by a woman? He was, in his own mind, the alpha male of his little world. In which case, Z decided, one turns the proverbial Nelson's eye and sails on into battle.
‘Can you account for your movements on the night of last Friday?'
‘You're not serious! How can you believe that I …?'
‘A murder inquiry, Mr Halliwell. Routine questions of all closely concerned with the victims.'
‘Not that closely.'
It was then, as the sharp denial snapped from twisted lips, that she realised: Jennifer Hoad wouldn't have denied herself this dishy younger man as a lover. Hadn't her own mother admitted to Beaumont that she was ‘a wanton'? And Halliwell, clearly ambitious, would have considered the benefits arising.
So – softly, softly, from now on. ‘Surely, Mr Halliwell, this isn't too difficult? When did you set off for Geneva? And by what means? Did you travel by train or plane?'
‘I bloody drove down. Alone. Checked in at the Hotel des Anglais on Quai Wilson at a little after midnight. I'd phoned that I'd be late and they kept my room on. Does that cover the time you're interested in?'
‘Perfectly, thank you. If we can obtain confirmation from the hotel.'
‘They'll tell you it was a double, lakeside. My friend was
already there, waiting.' His smile was smoothly sophisticated, man of the world.
Hilary's arrival with the two coffees interrupted them. He was clumsy opening the sealed containers to transfer the hot liquid into bone china cups, spilling some over his hands. Which perhaps accounted for the stained cuffs on his silk shirt. When he withdrew to wash himself Z turned the conversation while they drank their coffee.
‘Hilary tells me he was Mrs Hoad's “Ideas Man”.'
‘The nutter. Actually he's a bloody genius. I'll be keeping him on, if she got round to signing the partnership contract. First thing I mean to do now I'm back is trot round to Walker and Lillicrap to see what the legal position is.'
‘Perhaps you'd give me their address. I need to know if they hold a will.'
Again they were interrupted. Halliwell reached in his pocket for a vibrating mobile phone.
‘Excuse me.' He scowled at the recognised number and tapped out a text message. ‘Arrived safely. Love you too, darling,' he drawled aloud.
He pocketed the mobile, rose and went through to the office where he wrote out the address Z required and saw her to the door. Since the phone call he was decidedly edgy and anxious for her to leave. Suspecting subterfuge, Z would have given a lot to examine the mobile.
Outside again, she walked a few doors down and stepped into a jeweller's doorway to look back. She saw Halliwell come out, the headlights of the Porsche flashing as he operated the key, and then he was pulling out into the traffic.
Zyczynski rang the Miradec Interiors number again on her mobile. When Hilary's practised phone-voice replied she identified herself. ‘One thing I forgot to ask you, Mr Durham. When and how did you notify Mr Halliwell of Mrs Hoad's tragic death?'
‘I rang him at the Paris office when I saw the midday news on Saturday. But he was away. So I left a message on the answerphone.'
‘Why didn't you use his mobile number?'
‘Because I don't know it. He's very cagey about who gets to contact him on that.'
Interesting. It seemed that Justin Halliwell kept two sides of his life apart. Perhaps business and personal.
 
Anna Plumley and her grandson were engaged in playing canasta. Very Fifties, she admitted, but a good challenge and worth bringing back in fashion. Caravan holidays were so often interrupted by downpours that she kept a stock of games to compensate Plum when deprived of his fishing.
Daniel had scorned Scrabble and wasn't up to the demands of mah-jong. He picked up the rules quickly, was a sharp player and remembered every detail of the discard pack. A pity he became petulant if she racked up a good score. ‘Can't we go out on one canasta?' he demanded.
‘No. Fifty-six cards, including the four jokers, and only two players. There's plenty of scope.'
They played on and, guessing he was holding two aces, she passed him one after freezing the pack. He fell on it avidly and melded with ninety, throwing in three eights for full measure.
Taking advantage of his temporary good humour, she murmured vaguely, ‘Met a village local a day or so ago. Ben Huggett. Ever come across him?'
Daniel grunted. ‘Bane of my Dad's life. Poached more pheasant than ever reached our table. In the end Dad sacked our gamekeeper and learned to live with it. Where did you meet him?'
Anna explained. ‘Do you think your father knew he took part in badger-baiting?'
‘If he did he'd have blown his top. Blood sports used to get him really mad. That's why he didn't hunt. Never could see that poisoning or shooting vermin was dodgy; could leave them to die more slowly and painfully of gangrene.'
‘He wouldn't have reported Huggett to the police?'
‘Not him. He'd have waded into the old rogue himself. Trapping game was bad enough, but at least it was for eating.
Anyway, who told you about the badger-baiting?'
‘Nobody. I caught him with a beast he'd dug out. He'd clubbed it to keep it quiet. Persuaded him to let the thing go.'
‘You what? Grananna, you're a bloody marvel!'
‘M'm, not one of nature's gentlemen, is he? I fancy I'm not his favourite woman of the year.'
Daniel laid his hand of cards face down and stared at her. ‘You were asking for trouble, however you did it. Makes me wonder …'
‘Wonder what?
‘Well, if he crossed swords with the Old Man …'
‘You mean your father?'
‘Yes. Then maybe … I mean, breaking in to steal isn't so much worse than plundering the same man's woods, is it? Just a sort of progression. And if there really was bad blood between them …'
‘You think he might be the man the police are looking for.'
Daniel swallowed hard. ‘The one who blew him away and then had to kill the others, once he was discovered.'

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