Strange Affair

CHAPTER FOUR

Shortly after half past six that Saturday evening, Annie walked out of the Oval tube station, where she’d been crammed in an overheated carriage with about five million people on their way home from shopping or visiting friends and relatives, and headed down Camberwell New Road, past the park on the corner. Young lads with shaved heads and bare upper bodies lounged on the grass drinking cans of lager and flexing their tattoos, leering at every attractive woman who passed by. A group of younger kids had set up makeshift goals with their discarded T-shirts and were playing football. Just watching them made Annie sweat.

Then she saw Phil.

He was on the other side of the street, walking a dog, some sort of little terrier on a lead. But it was Phil, she was sure of it.

The same lazy grace in his step, the casual but expensive clothes, chin up, slightly receding hairline. Hardly looking, she dashed into the road, aware of horns blaring around her, and she had almost made it across when his attention was attracted by the noise.

He paused and looked toward her, a puzzled expression on his face. Annie got to the pavement and stopped, oblivious to the cursing of the last driver who had barely missed her. It wasn’t

Phil after all, she realized. There was a superficial similarity, but that was all. The man bent to pat his dog, then, with a curious backward glance, he carried on walking toward the traffic lights. Annie leaned against a lamppost until her heartbeat returned to normal and cursed. This wasn’t the first time she’d thought she had seen him; she would have to be more careful in future, less jumpy. If she was to be realistic about it, she had to realize that bumping into him in a street in London was the last thing that was likely to happen.

She was still wired from the train journey. She would have to calm down. She had made the 3:25 and had even managed to find a seat in the quiet car, but no matter how many windows had been open, it had still been too hot. And she had been thinking about Phil, which was probably why her mind had fooled her into thinking she had actually seen him across the street. Throughout most of the journey, she had read the tabloids, scouring the pages for any whiff of Phil, but had found nothing, as usual. She had to get a grip on herself.

Despite the rule of quiet, more than one mobile rang during the journey, and Annie could also hear the overspill from someone’s personal headphones. It had made her think of Banks, and again she started wondering where the hell he was and what he had to do with Jennifer Clewes’s murder. According to the woman with the baby, Banks had left under his own steam that morning, but none of this explained what the hell was going on.

Annie found the house just off Lothian Road. The two DCs assigned to watch the flat were still sitting in the kitchen, the man with his feet on the table, shirtsleeves rolled up, chewing on a matchstick and reading through a pile of letters, and the woman sipping tea as she flipped through a stack of Hello magazines. Two tipped cigarette butts lay crushed in a Royal Doulton saucer. Somehow, both detectives managed to look like naughty schoolkids caught in the act, though neither showed any trace of guilt. Annie introduced herself.

“And how are things in the frozen north?” asked the man, whose name was Sharpe, keeping his feet firmly on the kitchen table and the matchstick in the corner of his mouth. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in about four days.

“Hot,” said Annie. “What are you doing?”

Sharpe gestured to the letters. “Just nosing about a bit. Afraid there’s nothing very interesting, just bills, junk mail and bank statements, all pretty much as you’d expect. No really juicy stuff. People don’t write letters the way they used to, do they? It’s all e-mail and texting these days, ’in’it?”

Considering that Sharpe looked about twenty-one, it was odd to hear him being so critical of “these days,” as they were probably the only days he knew. But the irony in his tone wasn’t lost on Annie, and the callous disregard which both of them seemed to display toward the victim’s home angered her. “Okay, thanks for keeping an eye out,” she said. “You can leave now.”

Sharpe looked at his partner, Handy, and raised an eyebrow. The match in the corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re not our guv,” he said.

Annie sighed. “Fine,” she said. “If that’s the way you want to play it. My patience is already running a bit thin.” She took out her mobile, went into the hallway and phoned DI Brooke at Kennington station. After a few pleasantries and the promise of a drink together later that evening, Annie explained the situation briefly, then went back into the kitchen, smiled at Sharpe and handed him the phone.

The moment he put it to his ear, his feet shot off the table and he sat bolt upright in his chair, almost swallowing his matchstick. His partner, who hadn’t said a word so far, frowned at him. When the call was over, Sharpe dropped the mobile on the table, scowled at Annie, then turned to his partner and said, “Come on, Jackie, we’ve got to go.” He made a show of swaggering as slowly as possible out of the house, which Annie thought would have been funny if it hadn’t been so pathetic, and with one mean backward glance mouthed the word “Bitch” and stuck his middle finger in the air.

Annie felt inordinately satisfied when that little scene was over, and she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea. It was lukewarm, but she couldn’t be bothered to make a fresh pot. One of the DCs had opened a window, but it was no use; there was no breeze to bring relief. An empty strand of flypaper twisted in what little air current there was over the sink.

While she was waiting, Annie took out her mobile and rang Gristhorpe in Eastvale. Dr. Glendenning had finished the postmortem on Jennifer Clewes and had found nothing other than the gunshot wound. Her stomach contents consisted of a partially digested ham-and-tomato sandwich, eaten at least two hours before death, which bore out Templeton’s theory that she had driven up from London and probably stopped at a motorway café on the way. Glendenning wouldn’t commit himself to time of death, except to narrow it down to between one and four in the morning. The SOCOs were still working the scene and would get around to examining Banks’s cottage as soon as they could. They had found a partial print on the driver’s door of Jennifer Clewes’s car, but it didn’t match any they had on file.

As it turned out, Annie didn’t have long to wait for Jennifer’s flatmate. At about seven o’clock, the front door opened and she heard a woman’s voice call out. “Jenn? Hello, Jenn? Are you back yet?”

When the owner of the voice walked into the kitchen and saw Annie, she stopped dead in her tracks, put her hand to her chest and backed away. “What is it?” she asked. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Annie took out her warrant card and walked over to her. The young woman studied it.

“North Yorkshire?” she said. “I don’t understand. You broke into our house. How did you do that? I didn’t see any damage to the lock.”

“We’ve got keys for all occasions,” said Annie.

“What do you want with me?”

“Are you Kate Nesbit, Jennifer Clewes’s flatmate?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Maybe you’d better sit down,” said Annie, pulling out a chair at the table.

Kate was still dazed as she lowered herself into the chair. Her eyes lighted on the saucer and her nostrils twitched. “Who’s been smoking? We don’t allow smoking in the flat.”

Annie cursed herself for not getting rid of the butts, though their smell still lingered in the warm air.

“It wasn’t me,” she said, putting the saucer on the draining board. She didn’t know where the waste bin was.

“You mean someone else has been here?”

Annie lingered by the sink. “Just two detectives from your local station. I had words with them. I’m sorry they were so rude. It was necessary to get in, believe me.”

“Necessary?” Kate shook her head. She was a pretty girl, in a very wholesome, no-nonsense sort of way, with her blond hair cut short, black-rimmed oval glasses and a healthy pink glow on her cheeks. She looked athletic, Annie thought, and it was easy to visualize her tall, rangy frame on horseback. Even the clothes she wore, white shorts and a green rugby-style shirt, looked sporty. “What’s going on?” she asked. “It’s not good news, is it?”

“I’m afraid not.” Annie sat down opposite her. “Drink?”

“Not for me. Tell me what it is. It’s not Daddy, is it? It can’t be. I was just there.”

“You were visiting your parents?”

“In Richmond, yes. I go every Saturday when I’m not working.”

“No,” said Annie. “It’s not your father. Look, this might be a bit of a shock, but I need you to look at it.” She opened her briefcase and slipped out the photograph of Jennifer Clewes that Peter Darby had taken at the mortuary. It wasn’t a bad one – she looked peaceful enough and there were no signs of violence, no blood – but there was no doubt that it was a photograph of a dead person. “Is this Jennifer Clewes, your flatmate?”

Kate put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said, tears in her eyes. “It’s Jenn. What happened to her? Did she have an accident?”

“In a way. Look, do you have any idea why she was driving up to Yorkshire late last night?”

“I didn’t know that she was.”

“Did you know she’d gone out?”

“Yes. We were home last night. I mean, we don’t live in one another’s pockets, we have our own rooms, but… My God, I don’t believe this.” She put her hands to her face. Annie could see that her whole body was shaking.

“What happened, Kate?” Annie said. “Please, try and focus for me.”

Kate took a deep breath. It seemed to help a little. “There was nothing we wanted to watch on telly, so we were just watching a DVD. Bend It Like Beckham. Jenn’s mobile went off and she swore. We were enjoying the film. Anyway, she went into her bedroom to answer it and when she came back she said there was an emergency and she had to go out, to just carry on watching the film without her. She said she wasn’t sure when she would be back. Now you’re telling me she’ll never come back.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it’d be about half past ten, a quarter to eleven.”

That was consistent with the timing, Annie thought. It would take about four hours to drive from Kennington to Eastvale, depending on traffic, and Jennifer Clewes had been killed between one and four o’clock in the morning about three miles shy of her destination. “Did she give you any idea about where she might be going?”

“None at all. Just that she had to go. Right then. But that’s just like her.”

“Oh?”

“What I mean is that she wasn’t very forthcoming about what she was doing, where she was going. Even if I needed to know when she’d be back, for meals and such. She could be very inconsiderate.” Kate put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, listen to me. How terrible.” She started crying.

“It’s all right,” said Annie, trying to comfort her. “Try to stay calm. Did Jennifer seem worried, frightened?”

“No, not exactly frightened. But she was pale, as if she’d had a shock or something.”

“Have you any idea who made the call?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“What did you do after she left?”

“Watched the rest of the film and went to bed. Look, what’s happened? Did she have a car crash? Was that it? It can’t have been her fault. She was always a careful driver and she never drank over the limit.”

“It’s nothing like that,” said Annie.

“Then what? Please tell me.”

She’d have to find out sooner or later, Annie thought. She got up, took a couple of tumblers from the glass-fronted cupboard and filled them with tap water. She passed one to Kate and sat down again. She could hardly bear Kate’s imploring expression, the wide, fearful eyes and furrowed brow, the tumbler shaking in her hands. When Kate heard what Annie had to tell her, her life would never be the same again; it would be forever tainted, forever marked by murder.

“Jennifer was shot,” Annie said in a soft, flat voice. “I’m really sorry.”

“Shot?” Kate echoed. “No… she… But I don’t understand…”

“Neither do we, Kate. That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?”

“Harm Jenn? Of course not.” The words came out in gulps, as if Kate were desperate for air.

Kate put the glass down, but she missed the edge of the table. It fell to the floor and shattered. She stood up and put her hand to her mouth, then, without warning, her eyes turned up, and before Annie could reach her she crumpled in a heap on the kitchen floor.

“Look,” said Corrine, “are you sure we should be doing this? These are Roy’s private business files, after all.”

“It’s a bit late to get squeamish now,” said Banks. “Besides,” he said, gesturing to the CD, “maybe it’s just more of the same.”

Corinne gave him a dirty look and turned back to the screen. “Well,” she said, “at least the drive isn’t password-protected.”

“And given Roy’s concern with privacy,” said Banks, “that probably means there’s nothing really confidential on it.” Or nothing incriminating, he thought.

“So what’s the point?”

“Perhaps it’s something he wanted me to find and read. He’d know I’d be no good at cracking passwords and such. Besides, I need anything I can get. Business contacts, activities, habits, anything.”

“There’s quite a mix of stuff,” said Corinne, scrolling down. “Some Word documents, Money files, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, market research reports, memos, letters.”

“Can you print it out?”

“Some of it.” Corinne started selecting files and the printer hummed into action. It was fast, Banks noticed.

“Can you also copy the contents to another thingamajig?”

“You mean a removable USB hard drive?”

“Whatever. Can you do it?”

“Of course I can. Or at least I could if I had a spare one. Will a CD do?”

“Fine,” Banks said. “Just as long as we have a copy. The CD, as well.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I’m going to post it to myself,” said Banks. “That way I’ll have a backup.”

“But it might mean nothing at all. Maybe Roy’s just run off with his new girlfriend. Have you thought of that?”

Banks had. “Look,” he said, “it’s true that I don’t know Roy very well, and I’ll take your word that he’s an imaginative and bold businessman rather than a crooked one, but you didn’t hear the phone call. He sounded scared, Corinne. He tried to make light of it but he did say it might be a matter of life and death. Is that like him?”

Corinne frowned. “No. I mean, I’m not saying he’s a hero or anything, but he doesn’t usually back down from difficult situations, and he’s not an alarmist. Maybe he’s been kidnapped or something?”

“Has he ever mentioned that possibility?”

“No. But you hear about it sometimes, don’t you?”

“Not that often. But trust me,” Banks said, “something’s wrong. There are just too many loose ends. The missing computer, for a start. If someone went to the trouble to take Roy’s entire computer and all the storage devices they could find, then doesn’t that seem suspicious to you? They only missed the USB drive and the CD because both were hidden.” Hidden in plain view, Banks might have added, like Poe’s purloined letter. “According to his neighbor Malcolm Farrow, when Roy got in the car with the other man, neither was carrying anything. Someone must have gone back and taken the computer stuff between about half past nine last night and the time I arrived early this afternoon.”

“Has it occurred to you that he might have come back and taken it himself?” Corinne asked.

“Why should he? Where would he have taken it? Besides, his car’s still in the garage. He doesn’t own another, does he?”

“No. Just his darling Porsche. You’re right, if he went anywhere, he’d have taken the Porsche. He loves that car.”

“I don’t suppose he has another house, does he? Somewhere he’d go if he had to make a run for it? A villa on the Algarve, perhaps?”

“Roy’s not particularly fond of Portugal. And he doesn’t own a place in Tuscany or Provence, or anywhere else, as far as I know. At least he never took me to one. He loves travel and holidays, but he says it’s too much hassle owning property abroad. It ties you down to just one place.”

“He’s probably right.”

Corinne bit on her lower lip. “Now you’ve got me really worried.”

Banks put his hand on her shoulder, then took it away quickly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. She didn’t react. “I’ll find Roy,” he said. “But let’s have a look at some of these files first. They might help us find out where to start looking. You know more about his business affairs than I do.”

“That’s not saying much. Anyway, there’s nothing here that looks even the remotest bit dodgy.”

“How can you tell?”

Corinne faltered a little. “Well, I don’t suppose I can, really. As I said, the drive isn’t protected or encrypted, and Roy’s hardly likely to write down references to importing heroin, is he?”

“So there’s no way of telling?”

As Corinne spoke, she opened and scanned various files. The printer was still running. “Not from these files. Everything looks aboveboard. I think if he were trying to hide that sort of thing, there’d be something to set off alarm bells. It’s not that easy. Besides, as I’ve been trying to tell you, Roy’s not like that.”

“What about the Money files?”

“Simple income and expenditure. Company profit-and-loss sheets. Investment returns. Bank statements. Some offshore banking. His finances are in pretty good shape.”

“Roy did a lot of offshore banking?”

“Anyone working at his level of income has to. It’s a matter of keeping tax liabilities as low as possible. It’s not illegal. Mostly we’re looking at memos and correspondence here. You are, of course, welcome to examine them all at your leisure, especially as you took them in the first place, but I’d say you’d be wasting your time. Roy’s on the board of a few hi-tech companies, mostly interested in miniature information-storage devices, like that USB hard drive, flash memory cards, that sort of thing. Given the way the world’s going, with mobiles, digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players, and various combinations, it seems a wise enough area to be in. Smaller is better. As a board member, he’s paid dividends.”

“What else is there?”

“Recently Roy’s become interested in private health care. I remember him talking about it. Look.” She activated a PowerPoint presentation that extolled the virtues, and profits, of investing in a string of cosmetic-surgery clinics. “He’s on the board of a chain of health centers, a pharmaceutical company, a fitness club.”

“It all sounds very dull,” said Banks.

“I told you so. But guess who’s the one with the Porsche.”

“No need to rub it in. Is there more?”

“A few market-research reports on health and hi-tech, the kind of reports you buy, the expensive kind.”

“I was hoping for a few names.”

“They’re here,” said Corinne. “Memos and letters between Roy and various directors and companies he was involved with. Julian Harwood, for example.”

“I’ve heard that name.”

“You might well have done. He’s quite big in the private health-care field these days. Directs the chain of clinics Roy’s involved with. Anything from cancer to breast enlargement. Actually, Roy and Julian have been mates for years.”

“Harwood’s not a doctor, though?”

“No, a businessman.”

“Have you met him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“Maybe because that’s exactly what he sets out to do. Impress people. Frankly, I always found him a bit boorish, but it takes all sorts. It still doesn’t make him a crook, though.”

“So you don’t think there’s anything in there to suggest that Roy was involved in any sort of illegal or dangerous business ventures?”

“You can see for yourself it all looks quite kosher. I don’t know about dangerous, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just because it looks clean, that doesn’t mean the hi-tech companies he worked with weren’t selling illegal weapons guidance systems to terrorists, or that the clinics weren’t involved in genetic manipulation. Maybe the cosmetic-surgery clinics gave gangsters new faces.”

Banks laughed. “Like Seconds, you mean?”

Corinne frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s a film. Rock Hudson. A man gets a new face, new identity.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I suppose my point is that they’re not exactly going to announce things like that in letters six feet high, are they? It’s a wide-open world. You should know that. Even the most innocuous-looking enterprise on the surface can turn out to be a whole different matter if you dig a little deeper.”

Banks did know that, and it didn’t make him feel a great deal easier about Roy.

Corinne collected the pile of printed paper, put it in a folder and handed it to him. “Here. Be my guest.”

Banks picked up the folder, put it in his briefcase and stood up. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “You’ve been very generous with your time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Corinne. “Just find Roy.”

“I will.”

“When you do, will you let me know?”

“Of course. In the meantime, you take good care of yourself. If you think of anything else, or there’s anything you need, well… you can ring me on Roy’s mobile. He left it on the kitchen table. That’s how I got your number.”

Corinne frowned. “That’s not like him,” she said. “Not like him at all.”

“No,” said Banks, and left.

Annie hadn’t seen anyone faint since she was about nine, when one of the women at the artists’ commune where she had been raised keeled over in the middle of dinner. Even then, she overheard some of the adults talking later, and the general agreement seemed to be that drugs were the cause. In the case of Kate Nesbit, it was most likely shock, and perhaps the heat.

Remembering her first aid, Annie placed Kate’s feet on a chair to elevate her legs above heart level to restore the flow of blood to the brain, then turned her head to one side so she didn’t swallow her tongue. She leaned close and listened. Kate was breathing without difficulty. Lacking smelling salts – never, in fact, having seen or smelled any – Annie just made sure that Kate hadn’t cracked her skull when she fell and then went over to the sink to pour another glass of water. She found a tea towel, dampened it with cold water and brought it over with the glass, then she got another glass of water for herself. Kate was stirring now, her eyes open. Annie mopped her brow, then lifted her into a sitting position so she could sip the water. As soon as Kate said she felt well enough, Annie helped her back into her chair, then cleared up the broken glass before continuing the interview.

“I’m so sorry,” Kate said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“That’s all right. I’m just sorry I couldn’t find an easier way to break it to you.”

“But shot? Jenn? I can hardly believe it. Surely that sort of thing doesn’t happen to people like us?”

Annie wished she could say it didn’t.

“What was it?” Kate went on. “Robbery? Not… like that other poor girl?”

“Claire Potter?”

“Yes. It was on the news for weeks. They still haven’t found the man. You don’t think…?”

“We don’t know yet. Jennifer wasn’t sexually assaulted, though.”

“Thank God for that, at least.”

“Her things are missing,” Annie said. “Handbag, purse. So it could be robbery. Do you know if she carried much money with her?”

“No, never. She always said she could buy everything she wanted with her credit card or debit card.”

That was true enough these days, Annie knew. The only time people seemed to have a lot of cash on hand was when they had just withdrawn some from a cashpoint. “Look,” Annie went on, “you shared the flat with Jennifer. You must have been close. I know you’re upset, but I’m relying on you to help me. What was going on in Jennifer’s life? Men. Work. Family. Friends. Anything. Think. Tell me about it. There has to be an explanation if this wasn’t just some senseless random attack.”

“Maybe it was,” said Kate. “I mean, those things do happen, don’t they? People killing people for no real reason.”

“Yes, but not as often as you think. Most victims know their killers. That’s why I want you to think deep and tell me anything you know.”

Kate sipped some water. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, we weren’t that close.”

“Did she have any close friends?”

“There was this girl she used to go to school with, up in Shrewsbury, where she grew up. She came around once or twice.”

“Can you remember her name?”

“Melanie. Melanie Scott.”

Annie definitely got the feeling that Melanie Scott wasn’t on Kate’s list of favorite people. “How close were they?”

“They went on holiday together last year. It was before Jenn moved in, but she told me all about it. Sicily. She said it was awesome.”

“Do you have an address for Melanie?”

“I think so. She lives in Hounslow, I remember. Out Heathrow way. I’ll be able to dig it out before you go.”

“Fine. What was Jennifer like?”

“Quiet, hardworking. And she really cared about people, you know. Maybe she should have been a social worker.”

In Annie’s experience, the world of social work was hardly staffed by caring people. Well-meaning, perhaps, but that was a different thing in her mind. “What about all those mysterious comings and goings?”

“That’s just me being silly, really. I like to know where people are and when they’ll be back. Jenn didn’t always bother to let me know. But she wasn’t a party girl, if that’s what you mean, or a clubber. I think she was actually rather shy. But she was bright and ambitious. Like I said, she cared about people. And she was funny. I liked her sense of humor. We used to watch The Office on DVD together and we’d both crack up laughing. I mean, we’d both worked somewhere like that. We knew what it was like. I’ll miss all that,” Kate added. “I’ll miss Jenn.” She started to cry again and reached for the tissues. “I’m sorry. I just can’t…”

“It’s all right,” said Annie. “Is that what you always called her? Jenn, not Jenny?”

Kate sniffled and blew her nose. “Yes. It’s what she liked to be called. She hated Jenny. She just wasn’t a Jenny. Like I’m not a Katy or a Kathy, I suppose.”

And like I’m not Anne, thought Annie. Funny the way names, contractions, especially, tended to stick. She had been Annie all the time growing up on the artists’ colony, and only at school had people called her Anne. “The two of you must have talked,” Annie said. “What sort of things did she talk about?”

“The usual things.”

Christ, thought Annie, this was like trying to get water out of a stone. “Did you notice any change in her mood or behavior recently?” she asked.

“Yes. She seemed very nervous and jumpy lately. It wasn’t like her.”

“Nervous? Since when?”

“Just these past few days.”

“Did she tell you what it was about?”

“No. She was even more quiet than usual.”

“Do you think there’s any connection between that and her reaction to last night’s phone call, the late drive?”

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “There might have been.”

The problem was, Annie realized, that Jennifer’s mobile had been taken along with everything else. Still, the phone company records might help.

“Do you know which network she used?”

“Orange.”

Annie made a note to follow up, then asked, “Do you have anything with her handwriting on it?”

“What?”

“A note or something? Letter? Postcard?”

Kate turned to a corkboard on the wall by the door. A number of Far Side cartoons were pinned there, along with a few postcards. Kate went over and unpinned one of them, a view of the Eiffel Tower, and carried it over to Annie. “Jenn went to Paris for a weekend break in March,” Katie said. “She sent me this. We had a good laugh because she got back here before it did.”

“Did she go by herself?” Annie asked, taking a photocopy of the note found in Jennifer Clewes’s back pocket from her briefcase to compare the handwriting.

“Yes. She said she’d always wanted to go on the Eurostar and they had a special deal. She went around all the art galleries. She loved going to galleries and museums.”

To Annie’s untrained eye, the handwriting looked the same, but she would have to get an expert to examine it. “Can I keep this?” she asked.

“I suppose so.”

Annie put the photocopy and the postcard in her briefcase. “You said she went alone,” Annie went on, “but isn’t Paris supposed to be the city of romance?”

“Jenn wasn’t going out with anyone back then.”

“But she has been more recently?”

“I think so.”

“Just think so?”

“Well, Jenn could be very private. I mean, she didn’t kiss and tell, that sort of thing. But she’d been getting a lot of calls on her mobile lately, and making a lot. And she’d stayed out all night on a couple of occasions. She didn’t usually do that.”

“Since when?”

“A few weeks.”

“But this started before the odd behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you his name? I assume it was a he?”

“Good Lord, yes, of course. But she didn’t mention any names. She didn’t even tell me that she was seeing someone. It was just a feeling I got from her behavior. Intuition. I put two and two together.”

“But you said she seemed nervous and jumpy. That’s hardly the way a new relationship is supposed to make you feel, is it? And why was she so secretive? Didn’t you ever talk about personal matters, say, if one of you split up with a boyfriend or something?”

“We’ve only been flatmates for six months,” said Kate. “And nothing like that’s happened to either of us in that time. There’s that one bloke keeps pestering her, but that’s all.”

“Who?”

“Her ex-boyfriend. His name’s Victor, but that’s all I know about him. He keeps ringing and hanging around. You don’t think…?”

“I don’t think anything yet,” said Annie. “Are you sure you don’t know his last name, where he lives?”

“Sorry,” said Kate. “It was over before we started sharing. Or Jenn thought it was.”

“What did she think about it? Was she frightened of him?”

“No. Just annoyed, that’s all.”

“How did you two become flatmates?”

Kate looked away. “I’d rather not say. It’s private.”

Annie leaned forward. “Look, Kate,” she said, “this is a murder investigation. Nothing’s private. What was it? An advertisement in the papers? The Internet? What?”

Kate remained silent and Annie became aware of the tap dripping in the sink. She heard water spraying from a hose in a garden beyond the open window, and a child squealed with delight.

“Kate?”

“Oh, all right, all right. I thought I was pregnant. I did one of those home tests, you know, but I didn’t trust it.”

“How does Jennifer come into this?”

“It was where she worked. She was an administrator at a private women’s health center. They specialize in family planning.”

“Like the British Pregnancy Advisory Service? Marie Stopes?” Annie remembered both of these from her own unexpected brush with pregnancy nearly three years ago, though in the end she had gone to a National Health Service clinic.

“It’s a new chain. There are only a few of them open yet, as far as I know.”

“What’s it called?”

“The Berger-Lennox Centre.”

“And they perform abortions?”

“Not at the center itself, no, but they have satellite clinics, and they arrange for abortions to be performed. That’s not all they do, though. They cover the whole range, really: do reliable pregnancy tests; give advice and counseling, physical exams; arrange for abortions or put you in touch with adoption agencies, social services, whatever. They take care of everything. And they’re very discreet. One of my friends at work told me about them. Why, do you think it’s important?”

“I don’t know,” said Annie. But the one thing she did know was that abortion was a red flag for a number of fringe groups, and that people who worked at such clinics had been killed before. “Do you have the address?”

“In my room. I’ll get it for you when I get Melanie’s.”

“Fine,” said Annie. “So how did the two of you meet? You said Jennifer worked in administration.”

“Yes, she ran the business side of things. We got talking in the office while I was filling out the paperwork, that’s all. She was explaining it to me, how the system worked, that sort of thing. We just sort hit it off. We’re about the same age and I think she felt a bit sorry for me. Anyway, it turned out I wasn’t pregnant, and she asked me if I fancied a drink to celebrate. When we got talking we found out that neither of us was happy living where we were, so we decided to pool our resources and share. We didn’t know each other well, but we got along all right.”

“Where did she live before?”

“Out Hammersmith way. She said it was a really tiny flat and the area wasn’t very nice. She didn’t like walking there by herself at night. Can I have another glass of water, please?”

Annie wondered why she was asking, why she just didn’t go and get it herself. It was her flat, after all. Shock, probably. The poor girl looked as if she was likely to faint again at any moment. Annie went over to the sink and filled the two glasses. A fat bluebottle had got itself stuck on the flypaper and was pushing frantically with its legs, trying to get away, only succeeding in miring itself deeper in the sticky stuff with each new effort it made. Annie thought she knew what that felt like.

“Where did you live then?” she asked, handing over the water.

“Thank you. In Richmond. With my parents.”

“Why did you leave? Was it because you thought you were pregnant?”

“Oh, no. It wasn’t anything to do with that. I never even told them. And the boy… well, he’s long gone now. Richmond is just too far out. I was spending all my time commuting. I work in Clapham. I’m a librarian. It’s only a couple of tube stops, and on a nice day I can walk if I’ve got enough time.”

“I see,” said Annie. “Why do you think Jennifer was so secretive about this new boyfriend?”

“If you ask me,” Kate said, lowering her voice, “I think he’s married.”

That made sense, Annie thought. Jennifer probably wouldn’t have bragged about a relationship with a married man; the fear of discovery was likely to make her nervous, on edge, and maybe the mobile was the safest way to communicate. No chance of getting his wife on the other end. “But you have no idea what his name is or where he lives?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“How did they meet?”

“I don’t even know if I’m right about any of it,” said Kate. “My mother always said I have too much imagination for my own good.”

“Guess. Where might Jennifer have met someone? What kind of places did she like to go? Nightclubs?”

“No, I’ve already told you she wasn’t like that. Besides, she was usually too tired when she got back from work. She often worked late at the center. I mean, she’d go for a drink or a meal with friends from work now and then, and maybe the two of us would go to the pictures once in a while. Then there was her friend Melanie.”

“Could it have been someone she met at work?”

“It might have been. That’s the most likely place, isn’t it?”

Annie nodded. She knew that. Work was where she had met Banks and, in a way, Phil Keane. “Why wasn’t she out with him on Friday? It’s the weekend, after all. People usually get together.”

“I don’t know,” said Kate. “She just said she was stopping in. She did say she was expecting a phone call at some time, but she didn’t know exactly when.” Her face started twitching again as if she was about the cry. “Should I have known? Should I have stopped her?”

Annie went over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down, Kate,” she said. “There’s nothing you could have done, no way you could have known.”

“But I feel so useless. Some friend I’ve turned out to be.”

“It’s not your fault. The best thing you can do is try to answer my questions as clearly and calmly as possible. Okay?”

Kate nodded but continued to sniffle and dab at her eyes and nose.

“This phone call came between half past ten and a quarter to eleven?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“What about Jennifer’s family?” Annie asked. “Where do they live? How did she get along with them?”

“Fine, as far as I know,” said Kate. “I mean, she didn’t visit them that often, but they live in Shrewsbury. You don’t when they’re so far away, do you?”

“No,” said Annie, whose father lived even farther away, in St. Ives. “Can you find their address for me, too? Now that we know it is Jennifer’s body we found, someone will have to let them know what’s happened.”

“Of course,” said Kate. “I’ve got that one in my PDA. You know, in case of emergencies or anything. I never thought I’d need it for something like this.” She dabbed at her eyes again, fetched her shoulder bag and gave Annie the address.

Annie stood up. “And now,” she said, “can I have a look at Jennifer’s room, while you dig out those other addresses?”