False Money (6 page)

Another vote for action. Had Chris tried the hospitals? Yes, he'd said he had. Had CJ got on to the police about Tomi? He'd said he would. Hadn't Bea enough to do without looking for a girl who'd strayed from home?

She switched off the computer and stumped up to bed.
Dear Lord, deliver me from worrying about something that doesn't need worrying about. Or, if You do think I have to worry about it, then let me have a good night's sleep first? Please?

‘
Rock a bye, baby.' Claire could sing it in her sleep.

FOUR

S
aturday mornings were sometimes, but not always, quiet at the agency. This Saturday they were busy with clients coming in for interviews, and only two of Bea's staff were in to answer the phones. It was at times like these that Bea really missed Oliver, who seemed to be able to do three things at once. Maggie was no help with the agency work, whisking in and out to meet a contractor here and a new client there.

It was after twelve before Bea could spare the time to think about Chris and his troubles. She got him on the phone and, before she could say anything, he asked, ‘Have you found her?'

‘Not so fast. And no. Your library books are not there, but her passport is. You did try the hospitals, didn't you?'

‘It's serious, then? I kept hoping . . . All right, I'll try the hospitals again and ring you back.'

She started to say that his father was already on the case, but he'd put the phone down. As she did the same, it rang under her hand.

‘CJ here. I've done a spot of ringing around. The police say there's no unidentified body turned up in the London area that could be your girl. I've asked them to spread their enquiries wider.'

‘She's not
my
girl. I've asked Chris to check the hospitals again. I assume he's capable of that.'

‘Possibly. I have to go out in a minute, but I'll drop by your place on my way. I got Tomi's laptop working, copied the entire hard drive, and overwrote it on to a spare laptop for you. I haven't the time to go through it myself, but I thought you could get young Oliver on to it.'

‘He's not back till Wednesday.'

‘This is an emergency. Can't he get back sooner?'

‘Would the university consider it an emergency?'

‘Oh. Very well.' He disconnected.

Bea smoothed back her hair, then realigned the fringe to lie across her forehead. She inspected her fingernails, trying to remember when she'd next booked in to have a haircut and a manicure. She thought it might be in ten days' time. Could she fit it in earlier, perhaps? No, they were always booked solid.

Oh, well. It was a fine, frosty day with a brilliant blue sky. Soon, perhaps, the trees would break open their buds and they could believe that spring was on its way. It had been a long, hard winter.

She could do with some time to herself, but suspected that she wasn't likely to get it.

She swivelled her chair round so that she could look out of the French windows and up through the branches of the sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden. If she looked hard, she could see the tiny buds swelling on the tips of the twigs. Through the branches she could also see the spire of St Mary Abbot's church, pale stone against the blue sky. Victorian. High church. It was not really her style, but a constant, everyday reminder of what a difference it made to her life to know God . . . and what God might or might not want her to do in any given circumstance.

What He didn't want her to do was to get cross with Nicole and Max. Bea had a horrid feeling that she'd been less than kind to them the previous night. She'd been put on the defensive and had reacted by criticizing them. Slap on wrist. She must try not to find fault, but help them in whatever way she could. Perhaps soon they'd let her hold Pippin and give him a cuddle.

What did God want her to do about Tomi?

Whatever it was, Bea didn't want to listen. She'd more than enough on her plate as it was. She could do with some fresh air. A walk in the park, maybe have tea in the Orangery. Their scones were first-class. If she did that, she'd be out when CJ dropped another load of work on to her.

She really didn't see why she should be dragged into this affair. It was nothing to do with her, was it? No. If she got a move on, she could be out of the house before CJ reached her.

The front doorbell pealed. She closed her eyes, pretended not to hear it. Then sighed, pushed herself out of her comfortable chair and went up the stairs to let CJ in.

‘Must rush. Here you are. I've made a note of the parents' email address, so that we can contact them as soon as – if – we hear anything. Let me know if you find anything else of interest.' He thrust a slimline laptop at her and dashed back to his car, which was double-parked.

Bea considered dropping the laptop on to her stone doorstep, which would hopefully put it out of commission, but knew she couldn't do that. She was a creature of habit, wasn't she, trained to obey the Voice of Duty? She would go out for a short walk, and then put in an hour or so on the laptop. She was going out that evening, anyway, so couldn't give it much time.

She made the mistake of booting up the borrowed laptop straight away and never got out for her walk.

It didn't seem that Tomi had used it much. A few emails to her parents and friends – Bea took a note of their email addresses in a notebook. She couldn't find the notebook she'd used last night, so started a new one. There was a lot of spam, which Tomi hadn't bothered to delete; reminders about library books she'd ordered, which were now in and waiting for her to collect them; some query about her subscription to a Health Club; and so on and so forth. Nothing particularly interesting. Bea switched to the ‘Sent' box.

The girl's style had been chatty, friendly and, now and then, ungrammatical. Most of the emails were to friends, with a weekly one to her mother. None to her father. Tomi chatted about how she was getting on at work – nicely – and where she'd been with Harry, the boyfriend who Chris said had now moved on to someone else. She'd been to an art gallery with a different friend – unnamed. Not Harry? – and to some dance or other, very swish. She'd been worried that her old red dress mightn't have been up to scratch, but it had passed muster. She wondered about buying some more clothes if this whirl of activity went on. Possibly second-hand?

Health Club. Chris and Oliver belonged to the Health Club down the road, didn't they? Maggie had had a subscription for a while. Bea wasn't sure whether or not Maggie still used it, because it was rather posh. Expensive.

What was Tomi's salary? There wasn't anything on the laptop about that. She'd worked for a magazine, hadn't she? There must have been something in the paperwork at her flat about it, terms and conditions, etcetera.

Bea made herself a cup of tea before delving into the files which Harry had left on the laptop before handing it over to Tomi. He'd deleted them, but they were still hanging around if you knew where to look. Bea could imagine Harry's lordly attitude as he handed his old laptop over to Tomi. ‘Play about with this one, if you like. I've got a new one.'

The phone rang. It was Chris, sounding strained. ‘I phoned round all the hospitals again. She's not there. So where is she?'

Bea didn't reply. What was there she could say?

Chris gave a little cough. ‘Sorry. Think I'm going down with something. Can't settle to anything. When's Oliver due back?'

‘I'm fetching him on Wednesday.'

‘Not till then? I went round to Harry's just now. Tried to talk to him about Tomi, but we . . . we've never really got on. There was a bit of a confrontation, I'm afraid. He's, well, everything I'm not. Dependable, earning a mint, public school background, upper class right back to the umpteenth generation. Thinks I'm a charlatan.'

‘Surely not,' said Bea, who had sometimes thought along those lines herself. ‘What you mean is, you were tugging Tomi one way, and he wanted her to conform to his background?'

‘He wasn't thinking of marriage. He liked showing her off: black is beautiful, causes heads to turn, my girl has been the star of an art-house film. You know? Plus she worked on a magazine. She ticked all the right boxes as a girl to be seen around with, but she said he never took any notice if she expressed an opinion of her own.'

‘You saw different things in her.'

‘I liked her.' Frustration in his voice.

‘You think she's dead, too?'

Silence. The phone clicked off.

Bea went back to the computer to continue searching through Harry's emails. Lots of spam. Sent emails, arranging meetings. Business? Looked like it. There were draft reports in legalese on projects in the Middle East. More reports on a different set of businesses. All work-related. Nothing recent. Nothing personal. No nice chatty letters to friends saying how he'd been getting on with Tomi.

In-box. A couple of emails from friends, new email addresses, phone numbers, that sort of thing.

Bea turned the computer off. If there was anything there, it was going to need a better brain than hers to access it.

The front doorbell rang. There was no one else in the house, so she went up the stairs to answer it. It was Chris, looking gaunt. Normally he wore cheerfulness like a mask. It was interesting to see how worry had hollowed his cheeks, making him look a lot older.

‘Suppose Harry killed her?'

Bea blinked. ‘Come inside. You're letting the cold in.'

He stepped inside the front door and let her close it behind him. ‘Look, will you come with me to see him? This morning when we spoke, well, he took a swing at me and I retaliated. I annoy him, you see. Nothing whatever in common. I was angry that he could forget Tomi so quickly. I suppose I overreacted.'

Bea could imagine it.

Chris jingled keys, shifting from foot to foot. ‘I might have said, well, I suppose I did say . . . But she, his new girl, she's the daughter of someone important, and he's ambitious, aiming to climb the corporate tree, you know what I mean? Though I could have told him that this particular girl's well beyond his reach, and however much she plays around with a good-looking man, she always goes back to a dim-witted youth with a title. She's got far too much sense to tie herself down to Harry. If you see what I mean.'

‘So?'

‘So, what if Harry thought it would help him with Hermia? Yes, silly name, her parents were fixated about
A Midsummer Night's Dream
if you ask me, which of course you didn't, but . . . Where was I? Oh yes. Suppose Harry thought he had a better chance with Hermia if he got rid of Tomi? Suppose there was a row and he hit her or something? Killed her by mistake? He would panic, of course, and put her body somewhere, I don't know where. Tipped her in the river, maybe.'

Ridiculous nonsense. ‘I doubt it, Chris.'

He screwed up his face. ‘I can't just do nothing, can I?'

‘Have you told your father what you think?'

A hunched shoulder. ‘He said I was barking mad, but we're at opposite ends of the spectrum, aren't we? It's automatic that he thinks I'm wrong. You're different. You take your time and think about things. So, will you come with me to talk to Harry?'

‘Why should you think that—?'

‘You got Miss Drobny eating out of your hand, didn't you?'

‘Well, but—'

‘Look, come with me now. Have a word with him, ask him about Tomi. See how he reacts. I trust your judgement. Oliver's always saying what a good judge of character you are. I promise that if you think Harry's got nothing to do with Tomi's disappearance, I'll not mention it to the police.'

‘Police? But we don't know yet that anything's happened to her.'

‘Don't we?' His mouth set in a grim line.

She hesitated. ‘All right. I'll get my coat. Where's my handbag?'

‘Are these your car keys?' He picked them up from the chest in the hall. ‘I'll drive. I know the way.'

Bea opened her mouth to tell him she wouldn't trust him with the keys to a piggy bank, never mind her car . . . Her only experience of being driven by him before had given her a bad case of the shakes, but Oliver said Chris had at long last passed his test. Perhaps he'd learned by now how to drive without giving his passengers a nervous breakdown?