A Murder of Magpies (22 page)

*   *   *

Breda's husband, Austin, was at the airport to meet me, which he always did. They were good, kind people, and the fact that Breda hadn't wanted me to visit, and thought my trip a waste of my time and hers, would never have stopped her from making sure that I was not inconvenienced in any way. I liked Austin, who taught physics at the university in Galway, and we chatted amicably. He looked exactly like the cartoon image of the absent-minded professor: he was short, and stooped, and had flyaway white hair in a crescent around a bald crown. He was thin because when he was working he forgot to eat, and his clothes looked like they'd been bought in the local Oxfam shop, which I suspected they had. Breda had made a fortune, but apart from their large, extremely pretty house, they weren't interested in spending their money. Most of it went to their children, and to dozens of charities.

Austin was absent-minded, but he was very astute and, when he wasn't working, very observant of the world around him. After a few miles, he said, “Are you all right?”—making the same gesture to his eye that Conway had done that morning. My makeup skills were plainly lacking at six in the morning.

For no reason at all, I found myself confiding in him. I started by telling him about the break-in, as I had to so many people already, but before I knew it I had told him about Kit, and the manuscript, and Vernet. I stopped short at the money laundering. I didn't really care about it, only about Kit.

Austin was a love. He pulled over to the side of the road, and sat staring through the windscreen while it all came pouring out, without interrupting me or making those noises of gratified horror people make when they are listening to gossip that doesn't touch them. After I finished he continued to sit for several minutes, turning it over in his mind. Then he said the last thing I'd expected. “What do you know about Rudiger?”

“What? What do you mean? He's been my neighbor for nearly twenty years.”

“Yes. But Jack the Ripper was somebody's neighbor, too.” He held up his hand to stop my reaction. “I didn't mean it quite like that. But everybody is somebody's neighbor, unless they live in a hut in the woods. I'm intrigued by the fact that he suddenly made overtures of friendship after so long. From what you say, it was entirely out of character.”

I wanted to protest, but he was right. I'd spoken to the man twice: ten minutes' conversation in fifteen-plus years, then out of nowhere he was offering me the use of his spare room. Mr. Rudiger had been, so we believed, a distinguished architect. That in itself was a passport in my kind of world, and the respect it generated meant we didn't ask too many questions. I thought about him. He had helped me when I was burgled, and Jake had trusted him. Hadn't he? Was I simply reading that into the situation because
I
had trusted him? I'd kept him up-to-date over the last week, frequently dropping in on my way home from work, and he had been interested, pleased to hear what was happening, and pleased, I flattered myself, to see me. But the alternatives were worth considering.

Austin waited, to see if I wanted to say anything else. When it was clear that I didn't, he put the car in gear, and we traveled the last few miles to the house in silence. Just before we turned into the drive he said, “Would you prefer for me not to discuss this with Breda?” I hesitated. Breda wrote about teachers having midlife crises. What could she say that would be helpful? As if reading my mind Austin said, “Don't forget she worked for a solicitor for nearly twenty years. She hasn't had a sheltered life. Even more, she understands people, and motive. It's what makes her a good writer.”

He was right. I said, weakly, “Let's see how it goes.”

Breda was at the door to welcome me. I felt a rush of affection for her as we drove up. The horrors of the past week—and the different sort of horror on receiving her book—had made me forget the genuine fondness I felt for her. She had turned sixty the year before, and had greeted that milestone with a generosity of spirit that I admired. She had a big party, but she announced that she couldn't bear to receive presents: She was a wealthy woman, and if she didn't have a whatever-it-was, it was because she didn't want one. So would we all please donate whatever we planned to give her to our own favorite charities. She, in turn, gave the same amount as the party cost her to a charity that worked to drill wells in Third World countries. She told me that she couldn't drink champagne comfortably in Galway if she thought children in Africa couldn't even drink water. But this wasn't some big announcement, she hadn't made a deal out of it. She only told me because I'd asked. She had done it, and was pleased to have done it, but she didn't need the approval and acknowledgment of her friends in order to make it happen.

I kissed her more warmly than usual, out of relief at seeing someone who was genuinely good—something that had been in small supply over the last week. I was so relieved to be able to say honestly how thrilled everyone was with her book that I was more effusive than usual. “I was saving the best news until I got here,” I said, smiling. “W H Smith's have chosen
Toujours Twenty-one
for their September Book of the Month. They love it.”

Breda was pleased, but not as overwhelmed as I'd expected. I kept forgetting that she'd known all along she was the goose that had laid yet another golden egg, in a long line of golden eggs. It was only Timmins & Ross that had thought she had transformed herself into a turkey.

“The satisfying thing for us has been how many young people—both at the publisher, and at Smith's—have taken to it. We're really going to extend your readership with this one.”

She nodded. That's what she'd been expecting. Only her publisher had been too dim to see it. She took me straight into the kitchen, where she had set out a late lunch. The house was Georgian, and it was large, but any ideas of palatial rock-star piles behind electronic gates were very far from the mark. The house had probably belonged to a land agent who looked after an estate for an aristocratic landlord. It was compact, and manageable, and Breda fit into it as neatly as any nineteenth-century land agent's wife would have, making sure her guests were comfortable. I watched her with affection as she went over to the cooker and turned on the gas under the soup. She looked much younger than sixty. Her hair was tucked up into a neat chignon that from pictures I knew she had always worn. She was trim and efficient in corduroys and a blue-flannel shirt, and her movements were swift and neat.

While we waited for the soup to heat we began to discuss the plans Sandra and I had made for publicity, the marketing and promotion plans, where we would like her to appear, what kind of publicity she'd be willing to undertake. All the basic apparatus of a Breda McManus bestseller. I showed her the artwork for the jacket, which she liked with reservations—reservations that were hardly surprising, since it was a hastily toned-down version of the camp send-up I'd originally asked for—and in general got the schedule in order.

Then there was nothing to do except relax and chat about mutual acquaintances over the lunch table until it was time for me to go back to the airport. Breda was still puzzled about why I'd bothered to make the trip, but I had no intention of enlightening her. Finally one silence got too long for comfort, and I looked at Austin. He nodded, and said, “Sam's found herself in a bit of trouble recently.”

Breda looked interested. I waited, and Austin set out the story, putting it far more concisely than I'd managed to in my notes on the plane. When he got to the question of Mr. Rudiger, Breda put her head on one side and looked at me sharply, like a robin outside the kitchen window that thinks your reason for existence is keeping the bird table topped up with bacon scraps.

“What was your impression?”

“I liked him. I
like
him,” I corrected, defiantly. “It's so melodramatic to think of him sitting upstairs, an agoraphobic criminal mastermind.”

“Melodrama is popular because it's very often true,” she said, absently. “Still, your judgment of him is not valueless.”

“Thank you,” I said, aiming for pleasant rather than sarcastic.

I failed, and she laughed. “I didn't mean it that way. People don't wear masks, and even when they do, their real features come through. If you like him, it's because there is something likable there. Yet it doesn't necessarily mean that he is a good person—there are plenty of charming rogues in the world. Austin is right. It's worth considering why he surfaced just now. It may be that you were never in need of help before in a way that came to his attention. It may be something else.”

*   *   *

By the time I was on my way home, this time in the noisy confusion that was commercial air travel, I had again mentally deposited publishing into a file marked
NOT IMPORTANT
. I would have to face Ben on Monday with the news about Smith's change of heart, and I needed to focus on that, but at the speed things were happening, forty-eight hours was a lifetime. Instead I called Helena as soon as we landed.

She was still at the office. I filled her in briefly on my meeting in the morning. “I think we need to sit down and see where we've got to, don't you?”

“Absolutely. It's worrying that the property problems have just vanished. What did you think of Conway? Does he not know about it, or does he not want you to?”

I shrugged, always useful when talking on the phone. “Your guess is as good as mine. He strikes me as on the level, but then again he runs a company valued at a couple of billion dollars. Who knows what is legitimate to people like that?”

My mother was used to dealing with mega-wealthy corporations, and was not swayed. “Avoidance of tax is one thing, evasion and corruption are another. If he's honest, he knows that. Is he?” My mother can sum up a person at fifty paces and she can never understand why I'm not even willing to try.

“At a guess I'd say yes, but it's only a guess. He's charming, and clever, and I'd guess unscrupulous. Whether that unscrupulousness extends to outright illegality, I don't know. What worries me, though, is why? Why would he bother with something as small as this? It's tens of millions, I understand, but why would a man earning the same tens of millions every year—”

Helena interrupted, “Tens of millions in a month.”

“In a month,” I agreed. “Why would he bother? It would be like you or me stealing a couple of years' salary. That kind of money would be nice, but it simply wouldn't outweigh the risk. Proportionately, that's all we're talking about here.”

“Then he's honest. Or at least, we work on the assumption that in this particular instance he is. Lambert-Lorraine has the reputation for being clean, and it seems to be so in fact as well. I know where to look, and if there was anything, I would have found it.”

“So we're back at square one.”

“Maybe. Let's sit down tomorrow and talk. Shall I come to you at eight?”

“Mother, it's the weekend. Could you make it nine?”

A sigh of wonderment drifted down the line.

I sighed in response. A good person to have on your side, but still a Martian.

 

11

I am not a late-night person at the best of times, and it had been a long week. When the phone rang at eleven thirty, I was just falling asleep. Jake.

“Is it too late?”

“Depends for what.” I reached for the light.

“Me.”

“Still depends for what,” I said, waking up properly. “If you mean dinner, yes, it's too late unless you want to heat it up and eat by yourself. If you mean to sleep with me, no, not too late at all.”

“I'll take what I can get.”

I affected mock outrage. “Are you suggesting that you'd prefer dinner, but you'll settle for sex?”

“I'll be there in twenty minutes.” Not disregarding me, just focused.

I got up and went into the kitchen. I talk a better game than I play, I know. I really couldn't sit by while a guest—and the relationship was tenuous, he was still a guest—opened a tin of soup in my kitchen. Anyway, I didn't have a tin of soup. I like cooking, and I don't do tins.

When Jake rang the bell he stood slumped against the wall by the front door for a minute. Then he yanked off his jacket and said, “I really need a drink.”

I kissed him sedately. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you need a shower even more. I'd offer to come and wash your back but, quite frankly, you don't look up to it. Go and shower, and I'll open some wine.”

He went without protest, which was a sign of how low he really was. By the time he was back, wearing my toweling robe, and carrying it off as though fuchsia was just the color he would have chosen for himself if he'd been asked, I had opened a bottle and had some soup warmed up.

“My God, is this the kind of service you always provide?”

“Pretty much.”

He sat down without a further word, and didn't look up again until he'd finished two bowls of soup and half a loaf of bread.

“Have you eaten at all today?” I demanded.

He shook his head, revived a bit by the food but still tired. “Could we try to manage without your famous imitation of my mother, just for tonight, please?”

“Not a problem. I really only do tea, the sympathy you have to get somewhere else.”

He spoke to an empty chair. “Now she tells me.”

I ignored that. “What now? Bed, or do you want to talk about what's been going on?”

“You're such a romantic.”

“You bet. If you know anything more important, then you're with the wrong woman.”

“Unfortunately, most of today was more important, even if a lot less fun.”

So we were going to talk about it. I supposed that I wanted to know, although pulling the duvet up over my head and pretending that none of it was happening for the next eight hours was awfully enticing.