Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 51

My urgency must have got through to Ricky. I had expected him to take half an hour to get to me, but the entry buzzer sounded in just over fifteen minutes.

He stepped out of the lift, wearing jeans and a heavy sweater and needing a shave. Alison followed behind, dressed almost identically to him; she was completely without make-up and her hair was pulled back in a pony-tail.

I led them through to the kitchen. Liam was asleep directly off the living area, and I didn’t want to disturb him.

‘So why the alarm call?’ said Ross, tersely, as I poured two mugs of coffee from the filter jug. Susie’s menu card was lying on the work-surface. I picked it up and handed it to him. He looked at it, then his eye hit on the cardiac squiggle.

‘Jesus,’ he murmured. ‘Whose?’

‘Ewan Capperauld.’

‘What!’ The word came out in an astonished half-shout. I worried that it might waken Liam, and signalled him to be quiet. ‘But Capperauld’s never been to the Torrent building,’ he said.

‘In that case he’s the only person in Anna’s book who hasn’t. That’s remarkable, isn’t it? But she told me that was where she’d collected all her autographs, so he must have been. Yet James Torrent clearly didn’t know it. He told me so himself, almost in so many words. “It would be good to have someone as eminent as Ewan Capperauld visit this building.” That’s what he said to me, when I saw him in his office.’ I turned to Alison. ‘Did he ever say or imply to you that Capperauld had been there?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘The opposite in fact; he told me that he wanted every eminent Scot to visit his new headquarters, and that Ewan was at the top of that list.’

I nodded. ‘And yet when I saw him there, he wasn’t all that bothered. Something happened between him giving you that instruction and my visiting him, to make him change his mind, or at least go soft on the idea.’

‘Something,’ said Ricky. ‘Like what?’

‘Like maybe he found out that Capperauld had already been to his building.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t ask him.’

‘Or Anna,’ I added. ‘But there’s someone we can ask.’

‘Who?’

‘Come on; waken up. Ewan himself.’

Ross looked at me as if he had a wrestling hold on something in his brain. ‘Easier said than done. Capperauld’s a big name; he’s also Miles Grayson’s star attraction, and Miles is my client. I can’t just go interrogating him.’

‘Okay, I’ll do it. Call his minder and have him brought here.’

‘Are you crazy? Talk to him in the morning, if you must.’

‘Have you got that much time, Ricky? Has Alison?’

‘I’ll take that chance.’

‘Nice of you to take it for Alison.’

He glared at me but said nothing.

We had been drinking our coffee in silence for almost five minutes when the mobile in Ross’s pocket sounded. He scowled and answered the call. I wouldn’t have thought his face could have got any grimmer, but as he spoke, it did. ‘You’re kidding,’ I heard him snap. ‘How would I?’ He flashed gimlet eyes in my direction. ‘Do your own fucking job, son!’ he growled into the phone at last, and jabbed the red button to end the call.

He told me what I’d guessed already. ‘That was Ronnie Morrow. They’ve matched some of the prints on the knife.’ He looked at Alison. ‘He’s looking for you, love. You’ve just gone top of the list of people he wants to question. He said he’s been to your flat, but you’re not there. Surprise. Then he tried to say that technically you’re still bailed into my custody so I should help him find you. You heard what I told him.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That’ll keep him at bay for a long time, and it’s probably put you second on his list. Now I don’t want to be third, so get that bloody phone out again and call Ewan’s minder.’

Ricky was well beaten. This time he did as he was told. It took Glen Oliver less than a minute to answer; quickly his boss gave him his orders. ‘What do you tell him?’ Ross exclaimed, suddenly. He looked at me, as if for an answer.

‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that it’s a very important matter involving his cousin’s murder, and that if he doesn’t get here pronto there’s every chance it’ll be all over the red-tops by the weekend.’ He repeated what I had said, almost word for word. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. I tried to imagine what we were going to say to Ewan. I could manage that okay, but when I tried to guess what he might say to us, I came up short; the Case of the Baffled Detective.

It was fifteen minutes short of one when the buzzer sounded again; this time it did wake Liam. He appeared in the bedroom doorway, bollock-naked, drowsy, growling, ‘What does an Irishman have to do to get some sleep around here?’ Then he saw Alison, who had come out of the kitchen. ‘Fuck,’ he said, ‘we could have pulled in the restaurant. Why change your mind now?’ At that point he remembered his state of undress, and dived back behind the door.

Ewan came storming out of the lift; I could see that he was in full Skinner mode, locked and loaded, ready for a fight. He blinked when he saw Alison, but his expression stayed hard. I led him through to the kitchen, where Ricky was waiting, and closed the door on Oliver, leaving him in the living room.

‘Okay,’ Capperauld boomed. ‘This had better be the story of a lifetime, Ross, or your security career will be over.’

His anger was so impressive that for that important moment Ricky was struck dumb. I wasn’t, though; I had seen him act before. ‘Come here,’ I said, beckoning him over to the work-surface, and pointing towards what lay on it.

‘This is the menu you signed for Susie last night.’

‘So?’

I took the book from my back pocket, opening it at the place I had marked and laid it beside the card. ‘And this is Anna Chin’s autograph book. Let me tell you about Anna. She was James Torrent’s front office receptionist, and she had a harmless hobby. Every time a celebrity signed into the building, she asked them to sign her autograph book as well. Nearly all of them did. Every signature in that book is matched by a signature on the Torrent registration sheets. . every one except yours, that is.

‘Let me tell you two more things about Anna. Maybe they’re new to you, maybe they’re not. First, she was having it away with your late cousin David; she’s one reason he dumped Alison. Second, last Friday night someone killed Anna in the office, at her desk, and tried to set it up so that the police would find Alison there.’

I looked at Ewan. ‘That’s appalling, Oz,’ he said, ‘but how does it justify you hauling me out of my bed in the middle of the night? It’s just as well Margaret’s gone back to London, by the way, or there would have been an explosion bigger than you can imagine.’

‘Have you heard any news bulletins today?’ I asked him.

‘No. Should I?’

‘I reckon so. If you had, you’d have heard that James Torrent was stabbed to death in his home overnight. The murder weapon was a paperknife which someone stole from Alison’s office. The police are looking for her now, and in the morning, Ricky’s going to have to take her in. He’s got no choice, or he’s in the crapper too.

‘When he does, he’s going to take that card and that book with him. He’s going to tell the police about James Torrent suddenly going all coy about your opening his building, when a couple of weeks before only the Greatest Living Scotsman would do.

‘Torrent thought you had never been in his building, yet if you look at the dates of the signatures after yours in Anna’s books, it appears that even when he gave Alison an ultimatum to get you there, you had been. We just want to know why, Ewan, that’s all.’

‘Then you can get stuffed.’ The anger was gone from his voice, though. He was playing a scene he hadn’t rehearsed.

‘Fine. Then we’ll go to the police, and they will interview you, for sure; discreetly, I would imagine. You’ll maybe tell them that Anna stopped you in the street, and they’ll leave it at that. If you’d told me that rather than telling me to get stuffed, I might just have believed you myself.

‘But you didn’t, so this is what’s going to happen. As soon as the police call you in for a chat, or even call on you, I’m going to tip off the tabloids, all of them, that you’ve been detained for questioning in connection with the murders of your cousin, Anna Chin and James Torrent.

‘I don’t know who or what you’re trying to protect here, Ewan, but you are not going to do it at Alison’s expense, or Ricky’s, or mine. You might think you can keep this under wraps, but I promise you, you do not have a fucking chance.’

I leaned back on the work-surface and looked at him, letting what I’d said sink in, staring hard in the hope that he’d know I wasn’t bluffing. . because I wasn’t. Alison and Ricky stood there silent beside me.

The wait seemed as long as any I’d ever known. The seconds seemed to be stretched like thick elastic as they passed. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and his teeth snapped together, but then he closed it again, and another elongated minute began. Looking at him, I knew what he was doing; the guy was rehearsing, mentally. The next thing he said was going to be very important, so he could not afford to falter over a single line.

Finally, he gathered himself, and nodded, as if he was a director satisfied with his own performance. He looked at Ricky, then at me, and finally at Alison.

‘Do you know what sort of a little shit your late fiance was, my dear?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He was the worst kind I know; a blackmailer.’

His delivery and timing were perfect. He held her eyes for a few seconds then turned back to me. ‘You’ve had a colourful career with the ladies, Oz; I know that much about you.’ (Spot on, Ewan; you’ve got my attention. That deals with the why; I could guess the who, but it wouldn’t be right. You’re on stage; you’re in the spotlight.)

‘It all began at a dinner party in Edinburgh, about six months ago. My private investments are handled by one of the oldest partnerships in town. They invited me to be their guest one night, along with a few other key clients. I went alone; Margaret was detained in London on business. As it happened, James Torrent, another of their important investors, was out of town that night too. He sent his niece, Natalie, in his place.’ (Of course he did. Who else in that set-up had the class to have pulled Capperauld?)

‘I was fascinated by her. You’ve met her, Oz. you must have, when you visited Torrent. . so you’ll understand when I say that there’s more depth to her than any woman I’ve ever known.’ He smiled, summoning up some classic wistfulness. ‘It was instant and it was mutual. It was faintly ludicrous, too; here we were, surrounded by elderly fund managers, people more staid than you could ever imagine, with lightning shooting between us. You have to understand, Oz, that this was not normal behaviour from me. I love my wife, and I’d never been unfaithful to her before, although it goes without saying that in our business one has plenty of opportunities.’ (Too right there, mate; I’d have been sorted with at least one of the four in the Kwei Linn if I’d fancied it.)

‘We left there as soon as we could and took a taxi to the Balmoral. I wasn’t staying with my parents on that trip; I had a suite there. We drank a little champagne, talked into the small hours and then went to bed.

‘The affair was in earnest from then on. That’s all it was, though; a fling, for her as well as me. We were very discreet. We conducted it either in Edinburgh, at her place, or on neutral ground; in Paris, once, when I had a premiere; in Madrid on another occasion, when I had a meeting with a producer. Natalie confided in no one, and naturally neither did I.’

He paused. I opened the fridge, took out a bottle of water and gave it to him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and took a drink.

‘Then,’ he continued, ‘I made my only mistake. We had an assignation in Edinburgh, one Friday evening. I flew in on the shuttle and took a cab from the airport. I called Natalie on my mobile, to let her know that I’d arrived. Her car was being serviced, so she asked me to pick her up from the office.

‘It was six-thirty when I arrived. Anna Chin was still there. I told her I’d come for Miss Morgan, and she paged her. Then she produced her autograph book, and I signed it. Technically, of course, I was never in the building, so I didn’t sign anything else.’

He gave a beautifully wry smile. ‘How was I to know that the girl. . the poor sad girl. . was my cousin’s lover, or that she wouldn’t be able to resist telling him who had called for Miss Morgan and whom she had kissed in the hallway, before they left? How was I to know?’

Then his eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened. ‘I found out, though; as soon as I got back to London, I found out. David called me on the following Sunday evening. There was no preamble; he told me that he knew and that he wanted money, or he’d tell Margaret. He asked for a quarter of a million.’

‘Did you pay him?’ Ricky asked.

Ewan looked at him as if he were a heckler. He ignored his question altogether; no ad libs in this performance. ‘I called Natalie immediately, to warn her. Her first reaction was to declare that Anna was fired. I asked her not to do that; it could only have raised questions. I said that I would pay him what he asked, in the hope that it would be his last demand. . a hope more than an expectation, I admit. Natalie wouldn’t hear of it. She’s a very powerful woman and formidable when she’s angered. She told me that her uncle had a business relationship with David’s firm. She said that she would speak to Torrent and that he would take care of the matter.

‘I trusted her to do that. I heard no more from David; and then I heard of his death. When I did, I assumed that Alison had indeed killed him. I haven’t heard from Natalie since then either. When all this blew up we decided that we should cool things, for a while at least, although really, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all over.’

He sighed, heavily, loud enough to be heard in the back stalls. ‘So that’s the story, Oz. I will tell that to the police, happily, but I will expect from them, and from you, a little discretion.’

‘You’ll take what you fucking get,’ I told him, cheerfully. ‘So Natalie thought that Uncle James could lean on David and that would be it. But what she didn’t know was that he was effectively out of the firm, and that Torrent had no leverage over him at all.’

‘So he got really heavy,’ said Ricky. ‘He took care of the problem in the old-fashioned way. But who?’ He sighed. ‘Ah fuck, who cares. With luck, Natalie Morgan will back up Mr Capperauld’s story, and Alison’ll be off the hook. Maybe she can tell the police who did the dirty work for her uncle.’

‘And will she tell them why he was killed, do you think?’ He looked at me. So did Ewan. So did Alison. ‘Well?’ I demanded. ‘So Torrent has criminal connections and he puts a contract out on the two of them? The business gets done, and he pays the money. So who killed him, and why? Did he welsh on payment?’

‘Unlikely,’ said Ricky. ‘People like that want paid in advance.’

‘Okay, why knock him off? Also, if it was a straightforward contract job, why go to all that trouble to frame Alison? Come on, man, what’s wrong with this picture?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I take your point. So what are you thinking?’

‘I’m thinking that the person Torrent told to take care of the problem was someone he knew. Let’s suppose that after the second killing, Torrent panicked; he became a threat to the killer himself, so he had to go. So who was that close to Torrent?’

‘Natalie?’

‘No. If she was going to do them both herself, why tell her uncle at all?’

‘Maybe he found out?’

‘No!’ Ewan shouted; at last, there was some spontaneity in his performance. ‘Natalie did not do those things.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked him.

‘Could Susie do such a thing?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I answered.

‘How do you know?’

He had me. ‘I just do, that’s all.’

‘Very well. Trust me on this in the same way. It wasn’t her.’

‘In that case,’ Ricky murmured, ‘who?’

‘There’s only one person left to ask,’ I told him. ‘Natalie.’ And then I paused. ‘There’s only one person left who knows about this. . or so the killer thinks.’

‘Oh Jesus!’ Ewan moaned.

‘Do you have her phone number?’

‘No. I had, but I tore it up when I stopped seeing her.’

‘I have,’ said Alison. She picked up the shoulder bag that she had dropped on the kitchen floor and dug out a personal organiser. She flicked through it, stopped, then read out, ‘Natalie Morgan, home; 261 3641.’

I put the kitchen phone on to speaker mode and dialled, carefully. The number didn’t ring out at all; instead it went straight on to the answering service. Natalie had a personalised message; ‘Hi, this is Nat,’ her chocolate voice announced to all of us in the kitchen. ‘I’m either out, on the bog, or on the phone. Please leave a message.’

I pointed at Ewan. He nodded, and moved closer to the phone. ‘Natalie,’ he said, ‘it’s me. I need to speak to you urgently, please call my mobile.’

I clicked the line shut. ‘The answerphone picked up right away,’ Alison pointed out. ‘That means she’s either on another call. .’

I gave her both raised eyebrows.

‘. . or the phone’s off the hook.’

‘Where does she live?’ asked Ricky.

‘Ravelston,’ Ewan answered. ‘Near Mary Erskine’s School, in a flat; it’s a top floor like this, but I can’t remember the number. I never even knew it; I never wrote to her, or even noticed it on the door when I was there. The police will know.’

‘The first thing the police will do,’ Ross barked, ‘is come here and arrest us. Come on, you’re taking us there. Make sure your mobile’s on, just in case Natalie calls back.’