A Murder of Magpies (30 page)

“As his was to me,” broke in Nick. “I couldn't believe it when a voice said, ‘This is Pavel Rudiger.' It was like someone saying to you, ‘This is J. D. Salinger.' I mean—”

I overrode him. “Could we postpone this meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society while I get up to speed?”

“Sure, sure,” said Nick, unabashed. “It was lucky that Pavel—” Nick was so proud to be able to use Mr. Rudiger's first name. He repeated, “that Pavel called me, because I had just had that weird conversation with you, and you'd hung up on me. He told me that you had disappeared. Following on from Kit's disappearance, it was more worrying than you just staying out overnight.”

“Even if,” I repeated solemnly, “young ladies today sometimes do.”

“Then,” said Mr. Rudiger, as though it were a routine event in his life, “Nick and I thought we should see what there was to be seen. So we went to Roxfield Road.”

“
You
went to Roxfield Road?” I didn't mean to be tactless, but he said it as if, after two decades locked in his flat, zipping off to Shepherd's Bush was the equivalent of walking into the kitchen.

He looked proud, and more than a little pleased. “It was necessary.”

“I'll say,” I muttered. He stopped, so I gestured. “Go on, please.”

“There is almost nothing to tell. Kay showed me how to call a taxi, and when I arrived Nick was waiting. We rang the doorbell and that poor woman answered.…”

“Gloria Ramsay,” I said. “What happened to her? I asked her to call the police, but I doubt she had the nerve.”

“She was standing on the doorstep, too afraid to leave, but too afraid to stay. We went upstairs and found you both.”

Nick broke in. He couldn't wait any longer, he was so thrilled with himself. “I decked him.”

“You what? You hit Davies?”

“Yup. I knocked him clean out, too. I haven't punched anyone since I was about twelve. If I'd remembered how much fun it was, I would have done it while he was at the LSD. He always was odious. Then Pavel called the police, and they brought you here. That's really all.”

“All.” I turned to Mr. Rudiger, who was still holding my hand. I put my other hand on top of his. “Thank you. I'm not sure what else to say. I know what it must have meant—how hard it must have been. Thank you.”

He didn't answer, but he smiled and added his other hand to the pile, squeezing steadily.

Jake was getting restless. “Can you just very quickly tell me what happened, what you remember? We've got Davies, and we've charged him with abduction, but Kit has been unconscious for nearly a week. He doesn't remember what happened for several days before. The doctors say his memory might come back, but it might not.”

I repeated what I knew, although Jake had had it all already. I didn't think he would take kindly to being reminded of that, though. “I knew Kit had been stalked by Davies. I guess after Kit ignored him, Davies escalated by charging him with harassment. When that didn't work, either, he must have got crazier and crazier, and finally decided to abduct Kit. Where he got the drugs, I can't imagine—”

“We've got that,” said Jake. “He was working at Boots as a shelf stacker. They'd had drugs pilfered while he was there, but no one was ever caught. He had access to everything: flurazepam, temazepam, Ativan, liquid valium. That's what you were shot full of. We're not sure about Kit yet. Once Davies had him, he didn't know what to do with him, so he just kept knocking him out.”

“But that doesn't make sense. What was he thinking? Gloria Ramsay was completely under his thumb—and by the way, how come the police didn't tell the LSD that Davies was still living there?”

Jake flushed. “It was a minor complaint. There was very likely no substance to it. The officer made a phone call, and then didn't follow it up. Davies just told Ramsay to say she hadn't seen him for over a year.”

I was embarrassed for him. “So Gloria…” I wasn't really sure what I wanted to ask. I just wanted to move away from the fact that the police had not done their job on the LSD investigation. It was over.

Mr. Rudiger helped out. “Poor soul. He had her convinced he was the Messiah returned.”

I was uncertain. “That's a joke?”

Jake didn't smile. “Not a joke. She was, as you saw from the posters in her windows, a fundamentalist. She drank, and she was credulous, and she was lonely. Over the years Davies worked on her, and she began to rely on him completely.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “It looks like he was drugging her, too, although the preliminaries are coming in clean. We'll see what samples from her hair show.”

I was horrified. “You've arrested her?”

He was brusque. “What do you expect? She was living in a house with a man who had been abducted. Even if she didn't know before it happened, she did after. It's a small house. Kit couldn't have been there without her knowing. She's old, and she's sad. She'll be charged as an accessory after the fact, and at most she'll get probation, with luck compulsory psychiatric care. Davies will probably go for a psychiatric defense, too, but his treatment of her will make it hard to say that he was crazy. Stealing the drugs won't help, either. It'll prove premeditation.”

The legalities brought my mother to mind. She was not hugely maternal in a television sitcom way, but that didn't mean she didn't care about me. “Where is Helena?”

Jake smiled for the first time since he'd arrived. “She's in my office, ‘helping,' as we say, ‘police with their inquiries.'”

I sat up sharply and was promptly sick again. After a minute I waved the bowl away weakly and stared accusingly at Jake. “You've arrested Helena too?”

“For God's sake, don't be ridiculous. For what? As far as I can figure it, the two of you spent the entire weekend systematically working your way through the penal code, going for the record: How many laws could be broken in forty-eight hours. But I can't prove it. She's helping NCIS clarify their case against Wright. Not,” he added cheerfully, “that they need it really, since Wright's going to be banged up for murder for much longer than he is for money laundering.”

“Really? The Alemán stuff panned out?”

Jake stopped smiling. “No, I'm afraid not. I doubt anyone is ever going to be charged with that. But we'll get him for the courier. The daft fucker used his own phone to ring the courier company and ask when the typist's parcel was scheduled to go out. Can you imagine?” He shook his head at the folly of the amateur criminal.

I yawned hideously. “Mmm,” I said. “Lucky for you. Although it's weird.”

“It wasn't luck.” Jake was outraged. “And what is weird?”

I gestured vaguely at a world of weirdness. “A plonker like Wright doing his own clerical work.” A thought struck me. “Do Selden's know?”

“I assume so. It's been on the news. Why?”

I sighed. “I would have loved to have been the one to break it to that pompous prick Hugo Littlewood. What a shame.” I yawned again. While I was on the subject of Selden's, I really needed to let my office know where I was. I opened my mouth to ask Jake to ring Miranda. Then I closed it again.

Jake was watching me. “What have you just thought of?”

“Miranda keeps my diary.”

He looked nervous, as though I had started speaking in tongues. I put my hand on his arm. “No, listen. Miranda keeps my diary.” This did not appear to reassure him, and I was suddenly too fuzzy, and too exhausted, to figure out how to explain. But I needed to. I shook myself alert and tried again. “It's in her handwriting.”

All three men looked at each other sideways. I knew that face they were all wearing. Then Mr. Rudiger broke ranks and took my hand. “Tell us,” he said gently. “What about her handwriting?”

That someone was trying to understand helped. “Wright's diary,” I said. “Do we know it's in his handwriting?”

Jake hadn't lost the humor-her look, but he was more comfortable now I was forming full sentences. He nodded encouragingly, and I tried to gather my thoughts.

“I often don't put my appointments in the diary. Miranda does. And publishing is not very hierarchical. Solicitors' offices are. Helena's secretary keeps her diary. Do we know what Wright's handwriting looks like? Do we know that his secretary didn't write those entries?”

Jake had shut down. I could feel it. He patted my hand. Good dog.

I contemplated acting in character and growling, but it didn't seem productive. Instead: “Talk to Tiffanie Thing—” I couldn't remember her name. “Just talk to her.”

*   *   *

When I woke again, they were gone. It was late: The blind was drawn and the light was carefully shaded. I was feeling less nauseous than I had earlier, but my head still pounded. The room was designed to create the minimum impact: dim light, pastel colors, only one chair. Helena was sitting in it, with Diego Alemán and Patrick Conway leaning over her, talking softly.

I watched them for a while with that disengaged quality that comes with being ill. It was an unlikely grouping, but I wasn't really curious. Finally, I said, “Hey.”

They looked up and turned to me. Helena smiled and kissed me, pleased to see me, but not overwhelmed by what I'd gone through. Conway boomed, “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” but when I flinched, he lowered his voice and looked solemn. “Sorry,” he whispered. I thought the whispering might be worse than the cheery shouting.

I looked at Alemán. “Come,” said Conway, waving him forward. “You haven't met Diego properly yet, have you?”

I widened my eyes. I'd met him, and I'd thought it had been proper. I looked back and forth to the two of them.

Diego stepped over to the bed and held his hand out formally. “I couldn't introduce myself last time. I'm Diego Alemán, seconded to the National Criminal Investigation Services.”

I blinked. And waited.

He shrugged. “I was working undercover. I'm with Revenue and Customs. We'd seen the money going through Intinvest. We needed to find out where it was coming from, and where it was going to.”

“You aren't a student at Birkbeck?”

He smiled, pleased that I hadn't even had a suspicion. “No. Rosie Stanley is my aunt, and when you rang Chris she thought it would be good for us to meet. Unfortunately, she forgot to tell me until after you'd arrived. I was working separately on tracing the Intinvest money, and we had been preparing a dossier on Vernet.”

“Who,” boomed Conway again, “have turned out to be law-abiding to a fault, and have been given a clean bill of health by NCIS and the Revenue.”

“Rosie Stanley is your aunt?” I was focusing on the minor details, I knew, but the bigger picture had never interested me as much as it had Helena.

“My mother's half sister.”

“Then you aren't Diego Alemán? You aren't Rodrigo Alemán's brother?”

“I am. Why can't a Spaniard have an English second wife? A first family brought up in Spain, a second in England? My mother is Spanish and her half sister English. It's not unheard of.”

Of course not. I was a mongrel myself. But somehow you don't go round wondering if pleasant academic wives from north London might have world-famous couturier nephews who have been scandalously murdered. You also don't expect them to be as devious as Rosie had turned out to be. That slow, even schoolteacher's tone had had me totally fooled. Maybe I needed to rethink my views on north London. I certainly needed to rethink my views of Jake Field. He had, I'd been aware, been evasive about Diego Alemán, but that, I'd thought, was because he thought Diego was dangerous. Now it turned out he was a colleague, and Jake hadn't trusted me with the information. At least that resolved the question of why Jake hadn't been more curious about the meeting with Conway at Cooper's. He'd already heard all about it. Was he checking what I reported back? I pushed Jake's behavior to one side. I was going to have to think about it, but not now.

I went back to Diego. “I don't understand. Were you trying to talk to me because of what the book said about your brother, or because of your job?”

For the first time he looked embarrassed. “It was difficult for me. I had actually already decided that I couldn't work on the Vernet case altogether because of its links to Rodrigo. I had told Jake that, and I had told my own bosses that. That was why I was so shocked when I saw you at the Stanleys. Jake had said he'd put you off, and you wouldn't be trying to see me.”

I sniffed. “Jake doesn't know everything.”

“So it appears.” He took a deep breath. “I knew from my own work that the inquest results on Rodrigo couldn't hold. But at the same time my mother was very distressed, and if it was possible for the book not to happen, I wanted it for her sake. The idea that Vernet would then be tainted, and Rodrigo by association—well, it was all too much. I was going to back out, until you popped up at the Stanleys.”

“Yes, well, I wouldn't miss Rosie's lentil soufflé for the world.”

Diego laughed out loud. It was the first time I had seen him even smile, and I realized he was much younger than I'd thought. “Isn't she a terrible cook?” he said fondly. “Anyway, once you appeared on the scene, NCIS thought it would be a good opening to apply pressure, so we went to—” he gestured to Conway—“to see what would happen.”

I don't know if it was the information overload, or the thought of the lentil soufflé, but I'd suddenly had as much as I could handle. “What time is it? Are you allowed to be visiting this late?”

Helena hadn't spoken, content to let the others explain. Now she said, “You're in the Wellington. It's private. As long as we pay the bill at the end, we can do what we like. They asked me to let them know when you woke up, though. I'm going to ring for them now, and then we'll leave you until the morning. Will you be all right?”