Walking with Ghosts (22 page)

When she got to the office, Joni Prine was sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for her. When she saw Marie, Joni developed a coy smile. There was more than a hint of apology in it, but it would have taken Raphael to disguise the underlying avarice.

Marie waited until Joni got to her feet. She watched as the girl smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and continued watching as the same wrinkles cracked straight back into place. ‘Does this mean you want to talk to me about Edward Blake?’ said Marie.

‘Five hundred quid’s a lot of money to somebody like me,’ said Joni. ‘I’ve got Jacqui to think of as well, that’s my daughter. With that kind of money I could go back to Sunderland, get a place near my mum now the old man’s given up the ghost.’

‘Sounds like the right decision,’ said Marie, leading her into the office and showing her the clients’ chair.

‘Well, yeah,’ said Joni, ‘as long as Eddy doesn’t find out it was me that grassed him. If something happens to me who’s gonna take care of Jacqui?’ She became agitated, rubbing the backs of her hands on her thighs, gnawing away at her bottom lip.

‘You’re still not sure, then?’ asked Marie.

‘I think it could work,’ Joni said. ‘It’s a good plan, the way you explained it to me. But there’s still a risk.’

Marie nodded. ‘Small one.’

‘What I thought,’ said Joni, looking down at her hands. ‘I thought I’d feel better about that risk if there was more money involved.’

Marie felt a smile building inside her, but she kept her face straight. ‘How much were you thinking, Joni?’

‘Six hundred. If that’s possible. I’d feel a lot better if the pay-off was gonna be six hundred quid.’

Marie put her hands on the desk and leaned forward. ‘Joni,’ she said. ‘If the story is as good as you say, and provided it’s all completely true, you’ll end up with six hundred
as a minimum.
If we get the timing right and catch Edward Blake with his proverbial pants down, you could et a lot more.’

‘A lot,’ said Joni. ‘What we talking here, a grand?’ Marie nodded. ‘Maybe. Just tell me the story.’

‘He’s working for the tobacco industry,’ Joni said. ‘I don’t know how much he’s allowed to spend, but it seems like there’s no limit on it. What he does, he has to get MPs to vote the way the tobacco companies want. They’re frightened that the government’ll be pressured into banning cigarettes, you know, by doctors; or they’ll have to put out adverts saying that smoking fags gives you heart attacks as well as cancer, and if you’re pregnant it makes the kid get born with two heads but no brains. Stuff like that.

‘There’s a few MPs who keep at it, bring up bills to ban smoking. What Eddy has to do, he has to make all the other MPs vote against the ban. And the way he does it is to make them realize that the tobacco industry is always gonna give them a good time.’

‘By paying them?’ asked Marie.

Joni nodded. ‘Cash and sex,’ she said. ‘Booze, holidays, anything they want. Tell you the truth, I don’t know the half of it. I only really know the bits that’ve involved me. I’ve spent weekends with MPs, done more or less whatever they want, then at the end of it I’ve slipped them a brown envelope bulging with used notes.’

‘Can you give me names? Dates?’

‘Names, yeah. Dates I can probably work out. But I can do better than that. The last year I’ve been recruiting girls for Eddy. He’s got a couple of cottages in Wheldrake now, and he sets them up with an MP and one or two girls, whatever the guy wants.

‘Or if there’s two guys he’ll put three or four girls in there. Or boys if they’re that way. We stock up the bar, make sure there’s plenty of mirrors in the bedrooms, dressing-up clothes, everything they might need, and leave them to it. The girls do whatever the guys want. They’re young, they like them younger all the time, so we recruit runaways homeless kids, whatever. After a bath and a bit of scent and make-up they all look great. Eddy gives them a hundred quid for the weekend.’

‘You know where these cottages are?’ asked Marie.

‘Sure. Eddy doesn’t go anywhere near them. I have to get them cleaned up, stock the bars, deliver the girls down there.’

‘D’you get much warning?’ Marie asked. ‘When will the next party be?’

Joni smiled. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she said. She pulled two fat brown envelopes from her bag. ‘Eddy gave me these last night. I’m taking four girls to the cottages today. Then a couple of politicians’ll arrive around six o’clock tonight. According to Eddy one of ’em’s a top civil servant, but the other’s a cabinet minister.’

When Joni left, Marie went through the India Blake file. She read through the transcripts of Geordie’s interviews as well as her own. Something was nagging at her. Something they’d missed. But she couldn’t work out what it was. She made coffee and drank it looking out of the window. The pain in her head slowly ebbed away. She turned to the file again and read it from beginning to end.

She was putting all the paperwork back into order when Sam arrived. Marie told him about Joni Prine, and what she’d said about Edward Blake.

‘It’s only a hunch,’ he said. ‘But if I was on this case I’d have another go at India Blake’s old friend, whatever her name was.’

‘Naiomi Leaver? You think she knows more?’

‘Just reading between the lines,’ Sam said. ‘There was no love lost between Naiomi and Edward Blake. Naiomi could still be guarding India’s secrets in the belief that she was killed by her husband.’

‘Slow down, Sam,’ Marie said. ‘We can’t be sure that Edward Blake didn’t kill her.’

Sam shrugged. ‘The police don’t think so. If they did they’d never have let him go.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything else to go on. I’ll drive over to Naiomi’s house. Got the car keys?’

Naiomi Leaver was posing in the doorway to her cottage. She was a perfect miniature, composed entirely of fat-repelling enzymes. So small, she’s almost a waste of skin, thought Marie. Then checked herself quickly. Women’s bodies were a no-go area. Soft targets. Easy meat. She’s just small, for Christ’s sake. You could be, too, if you lived on pencil make-up and eye-drops.

This morning Naiomi was dressed in white designer jeans and a short-sleeved red top with a plunging neckline. The plunge was extraordinary, almost reaching the woman’s navel, yet betraying not a hint of mamilla, not an air bubble, or a blob. Marie reflected that the entire garment would not supply herself with enough material for a headband.

No scones or fine tea service today. Marie was invited into a warm kitchen and provided with a ladder-backed chair next to a red gas-fired Aga. Naiomi Leaver remained standing. She poured coffee from a cafetière into black mugs, handed one to Marie. ‘Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.’

Marie sipped the coffee. A lot of money had gone into cutting Naiomi’s age from a good thirty-five to an excellent twenty-eight. ‘I want to ask you again if India was having an affair.’

Naiomi shook her head. ‘I thought she was, yes. But when I asked her about it, she told me she wasn’t. I told you that last time.’

‘Yes, I know. But you said you were
fairly
sure, not absolutely sure. What did you mean by that?’

Naiomi tightened the lines around her mouth. ‘Who can be absolutely sure about another person? People tell you what they want you to know. The rest is guesswork.’

‘Did you believe she was killed by her husband?’

‘Yes. I still do. Edward is a rotter. He’s capable of anything.’

Marie put her mug on top of the Aga. ‘He’s certainly a womanizer,’ she said. ‘And his political and business methods aren’t exactly whiter than white. But there’s no evidence to show he murdered her. On the contrary, it looks as though he didn’t.’

Naiomi laughed harshly. ‘He’s clever, that’s all. He fooled the police, and now he’s fooling you.’

‘But what if he isn’t as clever as you think, Naiomi? What if India was killed by someone else? And that someone else was left free to kill again? Because of your vendetta against Edward Blake.’

‘It’s not a vendetta.’ Naiomi Leaver clenched her fists, the tension turning her knuckles white.

‘OK, what would you call it?’

‘I don’t call it anything. India was my friend. Edward fucking Blake left her to starve to death in that shed. I think he should be punished for that.’ Her voice had risen to a shout. But she checked herself, and the next words were little more than a whisper. ‘I couldn’t believe it when the police let him go.’

There was a pine kitchen table behind her, and Marie could see her hands gripping the edge of it. Suddenly Naiomi raised herself up on to the table. Her eyes glazed over and a single tear fell down her cheek. ‘He even tried it on with me,’ she said. ‘He knew we were friends and he’d happily have taken me to bed.’

‘The guy’s the worst kind of slime,’ Marie said. ‘He cheats and lies, and he’s always on the lookout for the main chance. But that doesn’t make him a murderer. If you know something else, something that India mentioned, about another man, then you should tell me.’

‘India didn’t mention anything.’

‘Maybe she wasn’t having an affair. Even if it was a  friendship, we should know about it.’

Naiomi shook her head. ‘I asked India about it, and she told me she wasn’t having an affair. She never mentioned another man. Not a lover. Not a friend. Nothing.’

Marie sighed and got up from the chair. ‘The police have closed the case against Edward Blake. They’ve looked at all the possibilities and decided that he didn’t have anything to do with her murder. We’ve also looked at it and come to the same conclusion. I’ve personally interviewed the guy, and I have all the same reservations about him that you have. But I don’t think he murdered his wife.

‘And something else. He’s not going to be arrested again. Whoever it was murdered India Blake has got away with it up to now because everyone assumed her husband did it, and a lot of time was wasted investigating him. I don’t know if you’re trying to protect India’s reputation, or if you’re hoping that Edward Blake’ll be arrested again. But whichever it is, the end result is that the man who killed India is still free and liable to murder again.’

Marie walked to the door of the cottage and opened it. Naiomi stayed put on the table. ‘Thanks for your help,’ Marie said. She walked out of the door and closed it behind her. She got into the Montego and put the key into the ignition. She’d reversed around the white Rover before the door of the cottage opened and Naiomi came over to her.

Marie wound the window down.

‘Come back,’ Naiomi said. ‘I don’t think it’ll help, but I’ll tell you what I know.’

‘We met in Taylor’s on Thursdays. We’d been doing that for years. Lunch. Girl talk. India enjoyed it as much as I did. If something else came up I’d always put it off. Thursday lunch was one time in the week when we’d put the world to one side. By the time we’d finished it would be around three. But then, a couple of weeks before she died India wanted to be away around two o’clock.

‘The last Thursday I saw her was when I asked her if she was having an affair. I couldn’t understand what was so important all of a sudden. That she’d let it take over our time together. I could only think it must be a man.

‘But like I said, she denied it.’

Marie had settled herself into the ladder-backed chair and listened to Naiomi’s confession without interrupting.

‘I didn’t believe her. She left Taylor’s just after two and I followed her. She fairly flew along Stonegate. She didn’t have a clue that I was behind her. I’m sure it never crossed her mind that I might follow her. She was so fixed, so intent on her target destination that there wasn’t room in her mind for anything else.

‘She went to the Coppergate Centre. It was busy in there, j people queuing to get into the Viking Museum, a couple of buskers, and children and young people running around. There were some homeless people juggling with fire clubs, and India collided with one of them, so he dropped his club and gave her a mouthful, but she hadn’t seen him, and she didn’t hear him shouting after her.

‘I followed her into Fenwick’s, the department store, and almost lost her there. I saw her get on the escalator, but by the time I got to the bottom of it she’d already disappeared off the top. The first floor there is dresses, suits, underwear,-and I wandered around for a few minutes, but didn’t see India anywhere. I thought she’d given me the slip, gone up the escalator and back down the stairs. I was ready to give up. But then I remembered the cafeteria, and took a peek in there.

‘They were holding hands across the table. India had her back to me, but I had a good view of him. He was small, dark. He was looking at her with that look that men have, you know, right at the beginning, when they’re hungry,] when they stare and shake their heads, like they can’t believe this is really happening.’

Naiomi shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘He didn’t look like he was going to murder her. He didn’t look big enough for a start.’

‘What did you do?’ Marie asked.

‘I came home. I had a couple of stiff gins and went for a jog along the beck.’

‘Weren’t you curious? Didn’t you feel like waiting to see what happened next?’

‘Yes, of course. But I was too bloody angry. India had cut 0ur meetings short to meet this man. I think if I’d stayed there I might have confronted her. Caused a scene.’