False Picture (27 page)

Bea took off her rubber gloves to rub her forehead. ‘No bank statements, no credit-card statements, no communications from mobile phone companies. Nothing with a name or address on it. I don't think there's anything here from Philip's room, but I can't for the life of me remember whether I emptied his wastepaper basket or not when I did his room. I think probably not because I was interrupted before I finished, and it's usually the last thing I do.' She was dying for another cuppa, and turned away to fill the kettle and search for some aspirin.

‘Not “Dot”,' said Piers. ‘“Patsy”. Would you believe! I didn't think anyone labelled their daughters with names that had another connotation nowadays.'

‘Patsy,' said a voice from the doorway, ‘is Liam's sister. So what are you doing with her photo, may I ask?'

Piers said, ‘Some sister! Who are you?'

Bea couldn't find the aspirin, but switched the kettle on and reached for the biscuit tin. When had she eaten last? ‘This is Charlotte. Everything in this case revolves around her. She's staying with me till …' Bea turned round to introduce Charlotte properly.

What Bea saw then switched her from fatigue to fury. ‘WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU WEARING?' Rage tumbled through her mind and sent her reeling. This girl! This … no word was too bad for her, this misbegotten …! She screamed out her frustration and dislike. How dare this criminally-inclined, ugly little …! Bea was going to kill her, chop her into tiny pieces and feed her remains to the fishes!

Normal service, everyday habits of restraint and politeness were forgotten. Words such as ‘cow' and ‘ungrateful toad' leaped out of her mouth. She heard them and with one part of her mind she was shocked at herself. With the other, meaner part, she cheered herself on.

How dare Charlotte assume she could take Bea's clothes to wear, and not only clothes out of her wardrobe, but the very clothes she'd bought that morning from Rubica, that she'd never worn herself! Worse, she was too dumpy to wear them gracefully, the skirt was too long and the brand-new jacket had been stretched out of shape over her bulges!

Charlotte crumpled into tears. Bea rejoiced. Let the girl cry! It was the only thing Charlotte knew how to do well! As soon as there was the slightest thing wrong, the girl wept!

Bea slammed both her hands down on the table, and the girl jumped. So did both men, who looked shattered. They were not accustomed to seeing the cool Mrs Abbot giving way to rage.

Bea began to shake. She leaned on the table, thinking, My head's going to burst! I'm going to faint. I'm not going to faint. No. She rapped out an order to the men. ‘Get that girl out of my sight. And get those clothes off her. Now!'

The two men jumped again. Both had their mouths open. Charlotte wailed, blundering to the door. They heard her footsteps going down the hall, and then the front door opened and closed.

Bea felt limp. She was
glad
the girl had gone. She remembered then that Charlotte had nowhere to go. She'd be wandering the streets, perfect prey for any man who tried to pick her up. Bea dropped on to the nearest stool and cleared her throat. ‘One of you had better go after her. We can't let her rush under a bus and kill herself. She's perfectly capable of it. Needs a full-time carer.'

The kettle screamed and shut itself off. Silence.

Oliver murmured to Piers, ‘Shall I go?'

‘Uhuh. I'll look after Bea.'

Bea ground her teeth. ‘If anyone dares touch me, I'll … I'll bite!'

‘Wouldn't dream of it,' said Piers. He motioned to Oliver to get going, and walked right round Bea to get some mugs down from the cupboard. ‘Tea or coffee? When did you last eat?'

Bea turned her head away, refusing to answer.

‘Tea, then,' said Piers, making a pot. ‘And you were going to get a couple of biscuits down you, right? Here. Take a chocolate one and shove it in your mouth. Good for you. When you've eaten three or four, I suggest you go and have a little nap after which you can doll yourself up in something pretty and I'll take you out for a meal. Something cheap and filling. Italian do you?'

Bea crammed a biscuit into her mouth and sent him a poisoned dart of a glance.

He didn't seem to notice, putting a mug, milk and sugar on the table in front of her. ‘Been overdoing it, have we? Just like old times. I'd come back after spending all our money plus having a raving good time in bed with another woman, and find you prostrate on the sofa after you'd been out cleaning all day to earn a few miserable pennies while at the same trying to keep Max happy. I remember there was always a nourishing stew on the stove for your ungrateful husband.' His memory was accurate.

He poured her out a mug of tea, added milk and sugar and put it in front of her. She took another biscuit, ignoring him.

‘Drink!' It was an order.

She shrugged, but did as she was told. ‘Good girl. Now up we go to bed. Would you like me to carry you?'

‘Tcha! As if!' In fact, she wobbled on her way to the kitchen door, but managed to remain upright. Reaching the stairs, she decided that this was no time to start mountaineering. She wasn't going to let Piers carry her, either. She turned in to the living room and made it to the big settee. Her eyes closed on her. She thought she might have heard the front door slam, and maybe she heard Piers say ‘Shush!' to someone out of sight. But that was it for the time being.

She woke slowly. There was a burble of sound in the distance, the radio or the television, turned low. Voices, men's. A door slammed and someone exclaimed, ‘Shush!' She tried to sink back into sleep, and remembered …

She shot upright, throwing off something that had been laid over her to keep her warm. Piers had put the spare-room duvet over her, and eased off her shoes.

She remembered. And groaned. Had she really used the word ‘cow' to Charlotte? And various other terms which she preferred not to bring to the forefront of her mind? How could she! Oh. Dear.

It was one thing to sling words at someone who could take it, but that poor little scrap Charlotte needed support, not annihilation, even if she was the most irritating child in existence. Maggie had been bad enough in the past, but Charlotte was the pits!

What was the time? How long had she slept? She caught her breath. She'd wasted time, and time was in short supply. She only had till tomorrow morning to sort this affair out. The moment Mr Van realized he'd been fooled, he'd swing into action, and there were too many people dead or seriously injured in this affair already.

Her headache was still there, but not as bad as before. She shuffled into her shoes, yawned, took a good look at herself in the mirror and reached for a comb and lipstick. She really needed a long relaxing shower and clean clothes, but first she must find out what information the men might have discovered in the rubbish. And apologize to Charlotte. She supposed.

The two men were in the kitchen, bending over a mess of paperwork.

‘Where's Charlotte? Did you manage to retrieve her?'

‘She was teetering on the brink of crossing the High Street against a red light, so I hauled her back and handed her a box of tissues. She talked solidly for half an hour about how nothing was her fault and Liam was a princely treasure and now she's washing her hair,' said Oliver, sliding papers into files. ‘She says Maggie is always borrowing your clothes, so she didn't see why she shouldn't do the same.'

Bea bit back a sharp rejoinder. ‘Any word from Maggie?'

‘None.'

Bea sank on to a stool. ‘Sorry for losing it. Sorry for leaving you to it. Somewhat tired. Been a long day. But we've only got twelve hours left before Mr Van discovers what's happened and alerts Mastermind. What have we got?'

Piers indicated various piles. ‘This lot is all junk mail. I think we can throw it. Next is unidentifiable paperwork, cheque stubs included; I suggest we keep all that on one side in case we get a brainwave. We did ask Charlotte to help us, by the way, but she says we're biased against poor Liam and she won't listen to a word against him. Which put the kybosh on that idea.'

Oliver pointed to a spread of paper and photographs. ‘That's all the stuff that we think came from Liam's room and the notes he'd written on the pad by the phone. We matched his handwriting and bright blue ink with signatures in the paperbacks he'd discarded, and some doodles on his porn magazines. Neither of the other two men use black ink or seem to have been addicted to porn so it's safe to say these are Liam's.'

Piers took up the tale. ‘There are two photographs of a girl in the almost altogether. This one is signed by someone called Patsy. She's definitely not Liam's sister, as there's a torn up card here from Patsy featuring a heart and some roses on the front, with a message to her “dearest, darlingest, lovingest L”. She thanks him for some “delights” which she says she's keeping in pristine condition against his return.'

Bea nodded. ‘Crotchless panties were mentioned by Liam when he phoned someone this morning.' She rubbed tired eyes. ‘Charlotte thinks she's his sister.'

‘She would, wouldn't she?' Oliver had obviously taken Charlotte's measure.

‘The other photo is of the same girl gone blonde, in an even more revealing pose.'

Oliver resumed, ‘The doodlings from the phone pad – you can see it's been torn off a pad – are in pencil but match Liam's handwriting. The figures are for times of trains and flights to Dublin. We checked, but the airline won't confirm that Liam was on any of the possible flights, and we've no way of knowing if he charged his credit card.'

‘Any recognizable phone numbers?'

Oliver indicated another pieced-together scrap of paper. ‘He had to get one number through Directory Enquiries, which he wrote down and then altered it by one digit after he'd double-checked it. Piers phoned the number. It belongs to a travel agency in Dublin.'

Bea said, ‘That makes sense. One of the Green Girls said she'd overheard him applying to an “old friend” for a job on the phone. He also spent time chatting up a girl.'

Oliver wasn't entirely convinced. ‘If he was going off to start a new life, with a new job and a new girl, why didn't he take the photos of the girl with him? He was pretty careful not to leave any other paperwork behind.'

Piers said, ‘I wonder how many pairs of crotchless panties he was distributing? Maybe he had several girls in tow and this one was going to be discarded in the same way he discarded Charlotte.'

There was a stir in the doorway and there stood Charlotte, hair springing out in a wild bush. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans of her own, and looked as creased as Bea felt. ‘He has not discarded me! How dare you say that! And as for you' – she turned on Bea – ‘you owe me an apology, I think.'

‘Do I?' said Bea, telling herself that it would do no good to get aerated all over again. ‘Then that makes two of us, doesn't it? I will apologize for calling you a … whatever I did call you … if you will apologize for abusing my hospitality.'

‘Humph!' Charlotte seated herself at the table, unasked. ‘Where's Maggie? And what's for supper? I'm starving.'

‘Maggie's out, trying to locate Zander. And supper is what you make of it.'

‘Well, I think it's a pretty poor do.' Charlotte's eyes were drawn to the papers on the table. She pointed. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you doing with Philip's chequebook? You've no right!' She pulled a face. ‘Come to think of it, I believe the bank's closed his account. It's all very well the boys going off like this, but they're leaving me in a horrible situation. I'm really worried about making the rent next week. Liam will send me his share, of course. If I remind him. Sometimes I have to remind him. Did you say he's gone to Ireland to see his sister?'

How long had she been listening at the door? Bea said, ‘There's a card here from Patsy. She doesn't sound like his sister.'

Charlotte glanced at it, but didn't read it. ‘Well, she is. I expect he's staying with his family. Have you got his home phone number there? Somewhere just south of Dublin.'

Bea said, ‘We thought
you
might have it. No? Is there anything else here that you can identify as being Philip's – or Zander's?'

Charlotte gave a deep, put-upon sigh, and separated out some till receipts. ‘I suppose these till receipts are Philip's. They're from the convenience store up the road. Philip likes his drink.' There were a few instant meals on the receipts but the bulk of the items came in bottle or can form.

Charlotte pushed some other receipts across the table. ‘Zander used to get his food – mostly fruit and vegetables – from market stalls near where he worked in Soho, so no till receipts. He was pretty nearly a vegetarian, but he did get some stuff in from Covent Garden specialist shops now and then, and these two will be for his cheese and pasta, stuff like that.'

She separated a third lot. ‘I shop in the M and S store in the High Street. I've got an account there which I pay monthly. I always keep my current receipts until I know my account's been cleared. These are old receipts from last month. We each buy our own food.'

‘And Liam?'

Colour rose in Charlotte's face. ‘He was a bit absent-minded about shopping for himself, so I usually shared what I had with him. He paid me back by getting in pizzas or other takeaways a couple of times a week.'

Oh, yeah! thought Bea. Then she remembered the mess of foil plates that had been in the flat when she first went in to clean it, and had to admit that maybe Liam hadn't been all on the take.

‘What's all this?' Charlotte had homed in on the porn. Her eyes found the bright blue doodles, and some of the colour left her face. She laid the magazine down.

‘Well, I suppose men have to have their little ways, don't they?'