‘Bye, Harry,’ she said, not daring to look up.
He turned away and the door closed behind him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Temporary accommodation was never going to be much of a challenge for a man like Harry. His years in the military and in politics had left him with a wide network of friends. And the timing was right at the start of the summer: Parliament had just gone into recess and many of the boltholes used by politicians as their London bases were now empty. It took him only a couple of phone calls to find somewhere, and it proved to be exceptional – a houseboat moored on the river at Chelsea just off Cheyne Walk. It belonged to a Scottish hereditary peer, Lord Glenmartin. ‘Make yourself at home, dear boy. No maid service, no milk in the fridge and the claret’s pretty disgusting, but it’s yours until October, if you want.’
‘You’re a pal, Angus.’
‘But what is it, Harry, woman trouble?’ The Scotsman sighed. ‘Not again. I’d lend you my sister but, well, you’re a friend and she has this terrible habit of wanting to marry every man she sleeps with.’
‘The keys and the claret are more than enough.’
‘I’ll give the security chaps a call, let them know you’re coming. Ah, spare key. Unimaginative, I know, but it’s in one of the flowerpots. Third on left.’
The houseboat turned out to be forty-six feet of old pine panels, book cases, narrow beds and Spartan cooking facilities, with an old solid-fuel stove in the middle of the main cabin and the paperwork that marked the paraphernalia of a parliamentary life piled on almost every conceivable surface. It was south-facing, almost stifling in the sun, and he threw open all the windows and hatches to catch the breeze. He found the claret, a case of ageing Saint-Julien that only Angus would dare call disgusting but which was in dire need of rescue from the heat before it turned into cooking wine. The faint aroma of cigars hung in the air and dying stags stared at him from every wall. He found fresh linen in the closet, where Glenmartin had directed him, restocked the fridge and tidied the papers into orderly piles. When he had finished he took himself up to the sun deck at the bow, overlooking the river, and started on the first bottle of claret. The cork crumbled but he dug it out patiently. Beside him was a large flower pot that had been commandeered during the spring as a nesting site by a family of ducks. On the river swam bobbing moorhens; along it flew cormorants in search of elvers. His iPhone sat beside him for company and he kept staring at it, wondering if she would call, and debating whether he should. The light was beginning to fade, the noise of the water fading to a gentle murmur of the ebbing river. Still she hadn’t called, and he knew she wouldn’t. He sighed. He knew he shouldn’t bother her but picked up his phone anyway.
‘Hello, Alex. You said I should call.’
‘But of course, Harry,’ the now familiar voice replied. ‘How are things? How’s Jemma?’
‘I guess we’ve been better. Taking a bit of a holiday, truth be told.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Things have got a little confused, what with my father, Susannah Ranelagh. I even managed to get myself arrested.’
It took McQuarrel a moment to take in this news. ‘You ran a red light or something?’
‘There’s a Bermudan police officer, came over here to investigate the Ranelagh disappearance. Somehow she got herself murdered.’
‘Good grief!’
‘For a moment they thought I’d done it. I think they still do.’
‘But, Harry, this is appalling.’
‘Jem agrees with you.’
‘Harry, please, tell me, how can I help? Anything. I have a few good friends in the law, or if it’s money—’
‘No, just the bishop. The Bishop of Burton. I’d like to have a word with him, see if he has any insights. Can you help?’
‘I’m not sure I can, Harry. I’m not sure he’s even a bishop any longer. They have mandatory retirement at seventy, don’t they? And he must be all of that?’
‘Oh, I thought that you and he . . .’ Harry couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice.
‘Randall Wickham and I pass like ferries in a fog, no more than that. Had a bit of a falling-out, actually, some years ago. Over the bloody Arabs. Typical Senior Common Room banter, you know what these things are like. He wanted to bomb them with bibles. I thought it a rather silly idea and he took offence. Well, you know, High Table should be a bit of a battlefield, there ought to be casualties. After that we rather avoided each other, opposite sides of the fireplace in the Senior Common Room.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘I suppose I’ll bump into the man at some point, pontificating at High Table, but at the very earliest that won’t be until the start of Michaelmas term in October.’
‘Bugger.’
‘But if you don’t mind my asking, what do you need him for?’
‘He knew my father and Susannah Ranelagh so I was, you know, sort of hoping he might . . .’ It sounded confused, and was. The claret wasn’t helping.
‘Harry, it’s not for me to interfere.’
‘I called you, remember? That makes it a sort of invitation.’
‘Where’s all this taking you? With the police. Your relationship with Jemma.’
‘It’s become a pain in the butt, hasn’t it?’
‘So why bother? Why carry on?’
‘The Father Thing, I guess. Chasing ghosts.’ Harry looked deep into his glass as though he might find the answer there, but it was no help. He sighed. ‘You know, Alex, I’ve been struggling to remember the last thing we said to each other. I can’t. Some unkind word, some intended slight, I suppose. I keep wondering if it was about my mother. I was barely a teenager when she died. I never really knew her.’ He was growing maudlin.
‘Oh, Harry, but I knew her! And one day I’ll sit with you and it will be my pleasure to tell you everything I knew of her. But don’t damn your father simply because she was unhappy in her final years. I know he tried.’
Harry struggled in silence with the idea as a wisp of breeze off the river tussled his hair.
‘I know you want to take sides, Harry, but that’s not a good idea. They are both dead, you can’t change a thing. Better to let it lie.’
‘I suspect that’s good advice.’
‘Then take it.’
‘I can’t, Alex. I’m their son. When they made me I think they forgot to include a pause switch.’
‘I hope you won’t live to regret that.’
‘You know, there’s something I do remember him telling me,’ Harry said, dredging the memory up from deep within his glass. ‘He always had a saying of some sort, eternal wisdom, like a bloody Christmas cracker. “Regret only what you don’t do.” That’s what he said. Perhaps that’s why he died never regretting a thing – he left that to everyone else. Johnnie the Chancer, Johnnie the Cheat, Johnnie the Cynic, the Irreverent, the Utterly Irresponsible,’ he said caustically. Some thing else Harry remembered his saying: ‘Never fall in love with anyone but yourself: it only leads to disappointment.’ And, as he remembered, Harry reached once again for the bottle.
As DCI Edwards had warned, they summoned Harry back in for another session. Arrested him all over again, cautioned him once more, bundled him into a car. Same interview room, same veneer, except there was no veneer left on Hughie Edwards. He walked in, grim-faced, clutching a file that was considerably thicker than the last time Harry had seen it. The DCI dropped it on the table, there was much scraping of chairs, the sergeant switched on the tape recorder and read out the formalities. It began.
‘Morning,’ Edwards began. His voice was as dull and as flat as an iron. It wasn’t a greeting, merely a statement of fact.
‘I want the record to show,’ Theo van Buren began, anxious to land the first blow, ‘that my client has always been willing to attend on the police voluntarily and to help them with your investigation in every way he can. There wasn’t any need to arrest him or to harass him.’
Edwards’s gaze didn’t flicker; his eyes fixed upon
Harry’s face were like thin slices of pomegranate, bleeding from exhaustion. He ignored the solicitor. ‘She was murdered. There were no bite marks, see. Couldn’t have been a bloody snake after all. Poisoned. That thick-as-treacle waitress was certain they were drinking, Inspector Hope and her murderer. The till receipts suggest that someone bought two glasses of Pimm’s at around half past noon. In cash, of course. We think whatever killed her was in the drink.’
The solicitor was about to intervene once more but held back, wanting to hear more.
‘She was murdered, Harry,’ Edwards continued. ‘The woman you say was your friend was murdered. After you arranged to meet her. Then she was gone. Hell of a coincidence, that, don’t you think? Or no coincidence at all. You want to tell me how you poisoned her?’ He held up a palm to silence the inevitable objection from van Buren. ‘A young woman has been murdered in broad daylight, a young policewoman at that, and for doing nothing but her job. And your client’s got his fingerprints and name all over that case file, so, yes, I’ll harass your client, Mr van Buren, I’ll hassle the entire population of London in order to get to the bottom of this one.’ He opened his file. ‘She had a young boy – did you know that, Harry?’
Harry’s expression turned to one of intense pain.
‘Twelve years old, he is. That’s all. Brilliant sprinter, so I’m told, plenty of prospects. An education. Income. Now he’s on his own. Totally buggered.’
‘Chief Inspector, I must—’
But the policeman cut him off. ‘It’s a technical expression, Mr van Buren. You understand, don’t you, Harry?’
Harry nodded sadly.
‘You say she was poisoned,’ the solicitor began again.
‘In a drink.’
‘You’ve checked the glasses for fingerprints?’
‘There were no glasses.’
‘But you said—’
‘The murderer removed them, didn’t he, so we couldn’t find any fingerprints. Isn’t that right, Harry?’
‘So what evidence did you find at the table?’
‘Nothing but bird crap. And Inspector Hope’s body.’
‘No CCTV?’
‘Not in the restaurant. We’re still checking the cameras around the park but it was crawling with tourists. That’s what gets me, Harry. Hundreds of people watched Inspector Hope die. She was sitting right there in front of the crowds, yet nobody remembers seeing a damned thing.’
‘So what evidence do you have against my client?’ the solicitor demanded, his voice rising in exasperation.
‘That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?’
‘But there’s something I don’t understand,’ Harry intervened. ‘You said earlier that it was snake poison.’
‘And so it was, as good as. Synthetic. Made in a lab. That’s what took forensics so much time, they couldn’t identify it at first. Don’t ask me to explain all the molecular bollocks but it’s based on cobra venom.’ He sniffed. ‘You travelled a bit, didn’t you, Harry, in your earlier life? Even spent some time in Africa.’
‘Sierra Leone.’
‘They have cobras in Africa.’
‘They also had cobras in Afghanistan when I was there.’
‘I’ve got snakes in my compost heap in Sussex,’ the lawyer said scornfully.
‘And in Colombia. You can add that to the list, too, Chief Inspector. I served there.’
‘Doesn’t show up on your military record,’ Edwards muttered, glancing at the file.
‘That’s because it wasn’t supposed to.’
‘Just checking.’ He was playing a game. He might sound clumsy at times but that was only to encourage the witness into being equally so. It was astonishing what suspects would blurt out when they took you for granted.
‘This is ridiculous,’ van Buren snorted in contempt. ‘You said it was synthetic. Made in a lab.’
‘What was the nature of your relationship with the deceased?’ Edwards asked, keen to change course.
‘I first met her when I was in hospital a couple of weeks ago in Bermuda. And, before you ask, I have no idea whether there are cobras in Bermuda.’
Edwards smiled thinly at the sarcasm. ‘You were in Bermuda for what purpose?’
‘To talk with Susannah Ranelagh.’
‘A woman you had never met before in your life, so you claim.’
‘Correct.’
‘Yet you travelled halfway around the world to meet her.’
‘Yes.’
‘And who is now missing.’ He paused, like a boxer, watching Harry to see if he flinched. ‘Susannah Ranelagh is missing. And Inspector Hope is dead. You’re a very dangerous man to be around, Harry.’
Van Buren reached out to grasp Harry’s sleeve; such loaded comments weren’t worthy of a reply.
‘OK, Miss Ranelagh was a lifelong friend of your father, so you’ve claimed, but you had never met her,’ Edwards began again.
‘That’s right.’
‘How strange. You see, she came back to this country frequently after she moved to Bermuda.’ He browsed through his paperwork. ‘The fact is she used to come back in October every year, regular as rain in the valley, so she did, until . . .’ His thick forefinger traced through a series of dates. ‘Until 2001, it was. After that, not so frequent, not so regular, but there were still the odd visits. And yet you say you never met her, not even the once.’
‘If I’d met her or known much about her I’d never have needed to ask for your help in finding her, would I?’
It was meant to be a shot across the bows and van Buren shook himself in both alarm and interest, but the policeman simply stared back at Harry, his pomegranate eyes dripping distrust. ‘Yes, that’s right. You called me asking me to check into the whereabouts of Miss Ranelagh. Claiming you had no idea what had happened to her. I think that was no more than a sordid attempt to cover your backside and throw around a little confusion. I seem to remember telling you to go to hell.’
‘Actually, for the record, you used rather more robust language. Another technical expression. Anyway, Inspector Hope made a formal request only a few days later. I was simply ahead of the game.’
‘And my client’s been trying to help your investigation ever since,’ van Buren added.
‘I even offered you a photograph of Miss Ranelagh and my father, which I thought might be of some use, but you weren’t interested.’
‘It was an informal conversation and I remember it very differently,’ Edwards replied evasively.
‘I’m still happy to let you have a copy,’ Harry declared, wanting to press home his advantage, ‘but you’ve taken my phone.’
‘That happens, when you get yourself arrested.’
‘No problem,’ van Buren said, sensing the DCI wasn’t half as confident as he sounded. ‘Harry sent me a copy, too. I’ve got it on my phone. We’re always happy to help, Chief Inspector.’ He dug into his pocket and, after a couple of taps, the image appeared. He pushed the phone across the table; the DCI and sergeant bent over to peer at it.
‘Susannah Ranelagh’s in the middle, my father’s sitting to her right,’ Harry explained. ‘Members of the Oxford University Junior Croquet Club. Called the Aunt Emmas.’
‘This is useless,’ Edwards muttered. ‘You told me it was fifty years old.’
‘I can’t help that,’ Harry replied, ‘but the fact is that at least two other people in that photo have died before their time. Violently. Croquet’s not supposed to be like that.’
‘Fifty years,’ Edwards repeated doggedly. ‘That would make them seventy, or thereabouts. Nothing so surprising in that.’
And Harry knew there was no point. The DCI was interested in Delicious and in Harry and in murder in one of his parks, not in ancient riddles. Yet the sergeant sitting next to Edwards had dragged the phone across the table so it was closer to him. He was staring intently, increasing the size of part of the image, licking his lips. ‘It may not be quite as simple as that, sir.’
‘What the
hell do you mean?’ Edwards snapped.
‘That one,’ the sergeant said, pointing. ‘The one on the left. I know he’s much younger but I’d swear a week’s pay it’s him.’
‘Who?’
‘Findlay Francis. The guy who writes celebrity biographies – you know, about minor royals and that sort of thing. Pretty salacious stuff. Landed himself in court a few years ago, and up against a wall in a dark alleyway once in a while, too.’
‘You can’t be sure,’ Edwards bit back, deeply unimpressed. ‘Not even the facial-recognition boys could work on that.’
‘No, but . . . I’ve been looking at some of this guy’s books. Like politicians, aren’t they? Writers always use much younger photos on their covers. And I’m sure that’s him.’
‘And what relevance do your reading habits have to our enquiries?’
‘That’s why I had some of his books, you see. He’s missing, too. His daughter reported it last Christmas.’
‘I think that’s enough for the moment,’ Edwards said through gritted teeth, snapping his file shut.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Harry sat out on the sundeck of his houseboat taking the neck off the third beer. It had been a bloody day. He couldn’t help but reflect that at one time, and not so long ago, he’d been a soldier, an officer in the British Army and part of the finest support group he could ever hope to find. Even after that, when he’d been a politician, people had queued up to persuade him he was important, special, wouldn’t leave him alone. Presidents and prime ministers had competed for his company. Now the world treated him like an open sewer. It would take more than a few bottles of beer to wash away the taste of failure.
The fierce orange sun had sunk lower in the sky and was bouncing off the water, dazzling him even through the sunshades, so he closed his eyes and allowed the warmth of the evening to massage away the weariness he was feeling inside, yet no sooner had he settled back in his chair than his ear began screaming at him, as painful as if it had just been ripped from his skull once more, telling him that he’d screwed up. Again. In the farthest corner of Hell, Johnnie would be laughing.