Roxanne, p.23
Roxanne, page 23
She nodded, smiled but said nothing; not for the first time, Waters thought that the beautiful girl he had probably fallen in love with had a ruthless streak.
He went on warily, ‘So why would you think I might be?’
Miriam said, ‘Well, it’s been a few months now… I know men get bored.’
This was entirely unwarranted and he knew she wasn’t serious, though she was keeping a serious face as she spoke. When he didn’t respond – and if you’re a detective, you can’t help treating your partner as a suspect sometimes – she said, ‘And you’ve been keeping some odd company.’
Again, he told himself she could not possibly know about Maya. That single visit to his flat, the awkward, embarrassing minutes that followed, the potentially catastrophic consequences last Monday – Miriam could have no inkling of it all, and yet she constantly surprised him still. He had learned not to underestimate her.
Waters said, ‘Keeping odd company comes with the territory, I’m afraid.’
‘Present company excepted, I hope!’
She liked to remind him they had met during an investigation, that their first proper conversation had begun while he was interviewing her as a witness in the murder of Neville Murfitt.
He answered, ‘Most of the time.’
‘Still,’ she said, ‘you should probably warn me if you’re going to parade around the town with your floozies.’
It took him just a moment to catch on, and then he laughed – ‘Oh! You’re talking about April!’
There was the fetching little frown that made him want to touch her face, every time. She said, ‘Yes. Bold as brass, in broad daylight, right down the middle of Eden Street.’
He said, ‘Right past your shop, where Patsy happened to be looking out of the window.’
She said, ‘I have eyes everywhere,’ but the frown was still there, and he realised the mistake he had made. It was only a matter of time. She reached a hand towards him, and he took it. He knew why – Miriam could read people more easily if she was touching them, she had told him this.
Then she said – ‘So whom did you think I was talking about instead of April?’
It was a more disturbing tale than she could have anticipated and the teasing had stopped almost immediately. She listened and asked questions about Maya Kumar, never once betraying any suspicion of Waters himself. There was no outrage, no condemnation of the behaviour of certain sorts of young women, and in the end Miriam seemed more interested in the actions of the detective chief inspector involved in the matter.
‘She dismissed her immediately, the very next day?’
‘Not literally. She couldn’t. There are procedures for all that. But she sent her out of the building and told whoever she was dealing with in Norwich that Maya wasn’t getting back into the building while she was running the squad. As far as I know, she hasn’t been back.’
Miriam said, ‘So, she’ll lose her job over it.’
‘Possibly.’
‘Your DCI Freeman sounds scary. Is she?’
‘Some people think so. Most people, I suppose.’
‘But not you.’
It was almost midnight, and Miriam lay against him, her head on his shoulder. He thought about the question before he said, ‘At first, yes. Working with her involves a steep learning curve. Especially after Alison Reeve. But if you’re straight with her… She doesn’t mind disagreement. We’re disagreeing at the moment, over the girl in the Mini.’
Miriam said, ‘The girl in the woods?’
That was the line the local media had taken; the tragic death of a young woman in an unofficial beauty spot. Yes, Waters said, and then ‘Roxanne.’
It seemed to matter, to say her name. Miriam squeezed him and turned away, ready for sleep. She never quizzed him about a case, respecting the original promise she had made not to do so – she would always listen but never ask. Waters lay awake for a long time after that, thinking about her and where he wanted this to go. But the very last face he saw before sleep came wasn’t Miriam Josephs’ face. It was that of a tall man, saying as he looked past them back towards the car, squinting a little as if short-sighted, ‘It’s a Mini, isn’t it?’
At 08.33 on Wednesday the 17th of April, DCI Freeman began the daily briefing. There were no preliminaries. She said, ‘It’s conceivable that Jonathan Walmsley might not have recognised the Mini straight away, but even if we give him the benefit of the doubt on that, it cannot have been long before he knew who was found inside it. He didn’t strike me as any sort of recluse. The fact he hasn’t come forward probably confirms he knew Roxanne as an escort, and he decided to gamble that we wouldn’t find the link between them. As we haven’t asked him anything yet, he hasn’t committed an offence, but we’ll soon be putting that right – this afternoon, in fact. As far as I’m concerned, he misses out potential witness status and goes straight to person of interest.’
No one in the room was likely to disagree with any of that. Yesterday evening, Waters and Murray had begun the process of sifting once more through all Roxanne’s contacts and appointments since she went onto the Elite agency’s books. She met a Mr W early on, within a month of first working for them, and then, assuming there was just the one Mr W, he became a regular client, often once a week. They could match this approximately to payments received in the related accounts files; Mr W paid some hundreds of pounds a month in fees to the agency. If those represented thirty per cent, it wasn’t difficult to calculate what the young woman had been paid. And if she had a private arrangement with Mr W as well, she could be earning thousands of pounds a month from that one client. At the time the Mini was purchased, she had known him for four months. Clive Betts had said, ‘Well, she must have been quite a…’ before catching sight of Denise Sterling and Serena Butler and completing his comment with ‘made quite an impression, ma’am.’
But their search of the records, which would continue this morning, had revealed something else, something familiar. Mr W had made no bookings with the agency since January. Like Brian Riley, when Roxanne Prescott left Elite Escorts, so did Mr W. Freeman wanted to know – are there many more of those? Just how much did she cost Elite when she left? Waters knew why that was of interest – the detective chief inspector was searching for a motive.
‘So,’ Freeman said, ‘a busy morning. We turn our attention to Mr Walmsley. See if the mobile number he used with Elite – and I know we haven’t confirmed he’s Mr W but obviously he is – see how often that’s present in Roxanne’s call history. How did they make arrangements? If there are texts, and I know that’s unlikely, any clues as to where they met? Go over her Favourites in the satnav again; any places that might link to Walmsley and his rolling acres? I want Tom to be carrying a bulging file when he meets Jonathan Walmsley this afternoon.’
Greene had managed the desk since the beginning of the squad’s operations – this was the first occasion on which Freeman had sent him out to conduct a significant interview. No one was particularly surprised, however. Greene was the most senior officer Freeman could send, and his description yesterday of the matter as “delicate”, was accurate. Walmsley was a well-known figure – president of the West Heath Golf Club, a magistrate – and as he made his way towards Freeman’s private office with the detective inspector, Waters couldn’t help reflecting on it all; two influential men, a peer of the realm and a director of the county’s largest estate agency involved with a twenty-two-year-old who had dropped out of school, become a drug addict and then an escort. Another of Smith’s sayings came back to him, delivered in his best faux Norfolk; ‘They say round ’ere, Chris, that it’ll draw you further than dynamite’ll blow you…’
Greene had been given the choice of who was to accompany him and he had asked for Waters. In Freeman’s office, Greene said, ‘Is Detective Chief Superintendent Allen aware yet, ma’am?’
She said, ‘No. He has meetings this morning, unfortunately. But I’m making it an absolute priority that he’ll be fully informed by some time later today.’
Freeman looked at them in turn but she needn’t have worried – they both understood why Allen would be told nothing until the interview with Lord Walmsley had taken place. There would be another frank exchange of views between Lake Central’s most senior detective and the woman leading the murder squad – a prospect of no concern whatsoever to the latter, it appeared.
Freeman told them to sit down and said, ‘We’ll talk again before you set off, see what’s come up this morning. But where are you with it now, Tom?’
Not for the first time, Waters found that the detective inspector’s thoughts and processes were similar to his own. Greene said Walmsley had to be involved in some way, but surely not directly; if Roxanne had died whilst with him, and assuming he had decided to conceal the fact, the estate was the last place he would leave her body. And there were similar questions to those they had asked about Brian Riley – why would a man who had an established sexual relationship with her introduce a substance like ketamine? It’s an unpleasant and dangerous drug, and the girl herself was experienced enough to know the risks. Greene said, ‘There’s a lot doesn’t make sense yet, ma’am.’
Freeman said, ‘No one’s going to argue with that. Chris? We know you don’t like Riley for this. What about a member of the aristocracy?’
‘I don’t think so, ma’am.’
Freeman looked at Greene and said, ‘He’s fussy, isn’t he? Think of the publicity at the trial! Why not, Chris?’
Waters said, ‘Well, everything that DI Greene has said, for a start. Why would he leave her on his own property? On the other hand, there has to be some connection. Roxanne is found on land belonging to one of her clients – that cannot be a coincidence. And while on the subject of coincidences: Riley is the secretary of the West Heath Golf Club’s social committee, and Lord Walmsley is the president. What are the odds on them both being involved with the same girl and not knowing it?’
Freeman took more time with this one.
‘You’re suggesting Riley and Walmsley knew they were both seeing her? That’s… Vaguely disturbing, detective sergeant. When I was watching Riley being interviewed, I found myself humming “This Charming Man”. I don’t know a tune for “These Charming Men”.’
Waters continued, ‘Murray has also found another possible link between them, ma’am.’
Freeman rolled her eyes a little and said, ‘Oh God… Allen’s going to love all this.’
But it wasn’t difficult to see that she was rather pleased with the latest turn of events when she said to Waters, ‘Go on. Tell me.’
‘It’s something in the client files from Elite. There’s a column which is blank for most of the contacts, but a few have the letters PP by their name. Brian Riley and Jonathan Walmsley both have those letters.’
Freeman said, ‘How many others?’
‘About twenty, ma’am.’
‘Out of how many clients?’
Waters said, ‘I haven’t counted. But well into three figures. Maybe between three and four hundred, ma’am.’
Freeman said, ‘A select little group, then. What do you think it stands for?’
‘We don’t know.’
Freeman wrote the letters onto the pad in front of her. Then she said, ‘I have to be careful with stuff like this.’
She looked up at Greene and Waters, and said ‘Fixation?’ as if they would understand with no further explanation; both men stared back at her with professionally-honed blank looks. Freeman said, ‘I could spend days trying to work out what this means.’
Waters glanced at the detective inspector to his left and then said, ‘We thought we might just ask the agency what it stands for, ma’am,’ and Tom Greene said, ‘Good idea.’
Cara Freeman seemed relieved that Waters had come to her rescue. She leaned back and said, ‘How the hell did that girl get mixed up in something like this?’
If they had the answer to that one, neither of the two men in the room was prepared to share it. Freeman went on, ‘I visited her parents last night. I was there for more than an hour. It was predictably tragic. Are you familiar with Kubler-Ross?’
Greene still looked blank, and Waters felt it incumbent upon himself to answer her this time. He said, ‘No, ma’am. Is he, or she, someone we-’
‘The five stages of grief,’ Freeman said, as if he hadn’t interrupted her at all. ‘I think they’re at stage three, bargaining. There was a lot of ‘If only she…’ and ‘If only we…’. It’s when people in mourning go back and try to make a deal with destiny. It comes after the anger.’
Waters nodded – there wasn’t anything meaningful he could say. Freeman was quiet for a moment or two, and then said, ‘One thing, though. They talked more personally about her this time, and I got the impression Roxanne was a bright girl. I mean she was intelligent. Just one of those kids who fall through the cracks. But she’d climbed back up. I think she would have known exactly what she was about as far as the escort business was concerned. I don’t think she would have done anything stupid or reckless. She’d been there and done that.’
This meant something to Freeman, and Waters was paying attention. She said to him, ‘Whatever happened, I doubt she did it to herself. Something was done to her. Somebody gave her that evil stuff, and I don’t think she knew until it was too late.’
On this at least, Freeman could see she had the detective sergeant with her. She shrugged then and said, ‘Anyway. They’ve asked me to go the funeral.’
The Walmsley estate offices occupied a single-storey row of converted stables across a courtyard from the main house. Greene pulled in and parked beside the Range Rover which Waters recognised from the day when the body had been discovered in the woods, almost two miles away. Waters pointed and said, ‘He’s here.’
Greene had his plump folder on his lap now, leafing through it, making sure the documents he was most likely to need were at the front. He said, ‘Yes. Didn’t I say? I called ahead – he’s expecting us.’
They got out and Waters looked at the house across the courtyard. Built of sandstone and flint, it was huge, old and impressive, comfortable with its place in the landscape and in history; Smith would have enjoyed speculating about the architecture. Across the frontage, a huge creeper was breaking into bloom, long tresses of pale lilac flowers glowing in the April sunshine. A silver, open-topped Bentley Continental Convertible stood close to the front entrance, worth about ten times as much as a new Mini, thought Waters.
The offices were modern and busy, containing more people than one might have expected. The woman who greeted them had obviously been warned – she said, ‘Oh, yes, Jonathan’s expecting you. I’ll take you through to him.’
They followed her past desks and screens to an office at the far end of the block. “Jonathan”. None of that old, outdated hierarchy here, first-name terms with the staff, a very up-to-date sort of Lord, perhaps. Waters had never been inclined to pre-judge others, something that was a strength in this job, but he would have admitted to looking forward to seeing Walmsley’s face when Detective Inspector Greene got to work. It shouldn’t be long now.
He was seated at an antique mahogany desk, looking busy, but he got up immediately and shook their hands. Would they like some coffee, or maybe tea? Late in the day for coffee, of course, a pot of tea, please Ann… His manners were easy, and Waters could see no apprehension, no suspicion. Complacent or confident?
The door to the office had been left open – it appeared they were to wait until the woman had returned with refreshments. Behind Walmsley were bookshelves covering the wall from the floor to the ceiling. There were rows of books about shooting game, managing game, cooking game. Another shelf contained volumes about other country pursuits – gun dogs, point-to-point, fly-fishing – and on the desk was the yearbook of the United Arab Emirates Golf Association. They play golf in the Middle East? Waters had no idea.
Walmsley had followed his gaze, and said, ‘Do you play, detective sergeant?’
‘No,’ and he felt like a socialist, just for a moment. Then he said, ‘My father does.’
Walmsley said, ‘Really? Which club?’
And Waters didn’t want to say because if his father knew Walmsley, the stain would have spread still further. Then the woman returned with a silver tray, and the question was forgotten.
Smith would have tried the tea but DI Greene declined and so did Waters. Walmsley poured some for himself into a china cup and saucer, still in no hurry. His mobile began to ring on the desk, and he pressed decline without looking to see who had called. He drank half the cup in two mouthfuls before he said, ‘Right. You’re following up on the sad death of that young lady. How can we help?’
Greene took a sheet of paper from the file – Waters recognised it – and put it on the desk, turned so Walmsley could read it if he wished. Then he said, ‘Yes, that’s what we’re doing, sir, and we’re sure you can help us further. Perhaps you could start by confirming for us how long you had known the young woman concerned.’
Waters hadn’t seen that coming, never mind Jonathan Lord Walmsley, who, after taking a moment, said, ‘I beg your pardon?’
Greene indicated the paper he had placed on the desk and said, ‘This is a statement from a Mr Lapsley, sales manager at Wretham Motors. As you know, they’re based up near Norwich. I had a long chat with him on the phone yesterday evening, and then this morning I sent an officer over to Wretham to get Mr Lapsley to sign this statement, which he did without hesitation. Mr Lapsley confirms that he sold a new Mini, a 5-door hatch in Tropical Blue, on the 15th of August last year.’
Walmsley gave the paper a glance and said, ‘And this involves me in some way?’
Greene said, ‘Very much so, sir. Mr Lapsley says he sold the car to you, in person.’
A smile and a shake of the head from Walmsley.
‘I fear your Mr Lapsley is mistaken.’
Greene said, ‘On your behalf, sir, I did question Mr Lapsley at some length about this but he is adamant. He admits that the signatures on the paperwork are illegible, and as you can see, whoever signed it omitted to fill in their name in capitals underneath. But Mr Lapsley has a sort of connection to you of which you are almost certainly unaware. His niece works for you. If I’m not much mistaken, she’s one of the young women out in your office. Tanya Pauley? Anyway, as soon as you arrived at Wretham Motors last year, Mr Lapsley recognised you.’
