False Alarm Page 9

  The sound of an altercation rose up the well of the staircase. A confusion of voices. Perhaps two people were arguing over who should use the lift next?

  Bea started to walk down the stairs. Past the flats of Carrie Kempton and Tariq she went. Down and down. Pause for breath, and down again. The shouting below intensified as she passed the flats for Lucy Emerson and the Muslim family. Surely Lucy would have come out of her flat to see what was happening, if she were at home? She must be out.

  ‘You bastard!’ A man’s voice. From a couple of storeys down.

  A girl, screaming, ‘No, no! Get off me!’

  Bea raised her eyebrows. Down another flight. The woman in the fake fur coat was standing by the door to the lift. Mahogany red hair, superb high-heeled boots, another huge handbag. Carmela Lessbury, lady of leisure. She took one look at Bea and turned her shoulder.

  There was a shriek from the girl below, quickly broken off. Someone being attacked? Mugged? Whatever was going on?

  Bea said to Carmela’s back, ‘Yes, I’ve been visiting Lady Ossett, and yes, I know something very odd is going on in this building. Who is it in trouble this time?’

  Carmela didn’t react, so Bea continued down the stairs. The sounds of distress below increased. A man’s voice threatened someone . . . the girl? ‘You filthy whore! If I have to choke the truth out of you, I’ll—’

  ‘You bastard! Leave her alone!’

  Bea hastened her steps. She could hear Carmela descending after her. Also curious, but not willing to get involved?

  A man cried out, ‘Aaargh!’

  Had the girl kicked her attacker where it would hurt most? Good for her.

  A heavy door clanged shut. The front door?

  So much noise! It was a wonder that the caretaker hadn’t turned up to tell them off. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ask why he hadn’t done so.

  Bea rounded the last corner and almost fell over a young man with a shaved head who was lying, doubled over, on the bottom step. He didn’t look particularly clean. T-shirt and jeans, no socks or shoes. Moaning noises.

  A similarly disarranged young woman was holding on to the newel post. Dark hair all over the place, livid marks on her arms, a torn T-shirt and jeans. She was wearing boots whose pointed toes had probably managed to connect with the tenderest part of the male and thus ended the fight.

  The lift door was closed.

  The front door to flat number two was open.

  Now who lived in that flat? Lucy had said it was ‘Daddy’s little girl and her bit on the side’.

  Carrie had added, ‘Daddy has pots of money but his daughter lacks manners and will probably kill herself with alcohol or drugs before she’s thirty.’

  Lucy had the last word, as usual. ‘She hangs around with a crowd . . . Not our sort, dear. We don’t speak except to say “good morning”, but they don’t even say “good morning” back. And the language they use is quite shocking!’

  As usual, the two ladies had summed up the situation rather well. Bea took out her mobile phone. ‘I’ll call the police, shall I?’

  The girl threw back her hair. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was angry enough to spit tacks. ‘Sod off, whoever you are!’

  ‘No police,’ said Carmela, speaking from behind Bea.

  ‘My name,’ said Bea, ‘is Mrs Abbot. Sir Lucas Ossett has asked me to find out exactly what is going on here. I can see you two young people have been fighting. You have a choice; either I ring the police or you invite me into your flat and tell me what’s going on.’

  Would the bluff work? She had no right to threaten them with the police, who probably wouldn’t interfere in a brawl on private property, anyway.

  The young man shuffled to his feet, still bent over, one hand holding his nose and the other on his crotch. ‘I’be bleeging.’ And bleeding he certainly was.

  ‘Serve you bloody well right,’ said the girl. She put two fingers up to Bea. ‘You can sod off, you old crone.’

  From ‘young lady’ to ‘old crone’ in ten minutes. Oh well.

  Bea pushed the door to their flat wide and walked in. The layout would be identical with that of Mrs Emerson’s flat above, but it was a world apart – not only because it was furnished in the latest modern style with blinds at the windows, chunky black and white furniture and stripped floorboards – but also because it hadn’t been visited by a cleaner for some time. Takeaway boxes, newspapers, beer cans and empty bottles were on every surface, and the air was laden with cigarette smoke.

  Bea opened windows and found the kitchen. It sank. Ugh. Least said.

  Would the bathroom be any better? Marginally. She took the toilet roll and a glass of cold water back to the living room, where the young man was standing, hands over his nose, swaying, not sure what to do with himself. The girl, meanwhile, had turfed some magazines off an armchair and had thrown herself back on to it, sulky mouth set to fire off another set of expletives.

  Carmela was obviously not going to help. She hovered in the shadows by the doorway, cuddling her enormous handbag.

  ‘Sit!’ Bea gestured the young man to sit down and, surprisingly, he obeyed her. He put his head forward; she slapped a wodge of wet tissue under his nose and instructed him to hold it there and not move.

  ‘Now,’ said Bea. ‘How many of these impertinent phone calls have you had?’

  The girl gaped. ‘What? How did you know?’

  ‘Among other irritating things that have been going on here, I was told that some call girls’ cards had been left in letter-boxes. My guess is that someone has not only put cards through your letter box, but has been giving them out with your phone number on them.’

  ‘Dod odley—’ started the boy.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said the girl. ‘Silly phone calls I can deal with. But that man who’s just gone had somehow managed to get my address. He turned up here wanting Miss Whiplash and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Connor here tried to throw him out and got more than he bargained for.’ She turned her stormy face to Carmela. ‘I always thought the call girl cards were intended to embarrass you.’

  ‘I thought they were, too,’ said Carmela, stroking the soft leather of her handbag with long-nailed fingers. ‘I did get a number of phone calls so I got rid of my landline and changed my mobile phone. That stopped it.’

  ‘For you. What about me?’

  Bea renewed the wet towels for the boy. ‘Aren’t you both ex-directory?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Carmela nodded, too.

  ‘Then don’t you see that the person doing this has to be someone either living in this building, or close to someone who is? How else could they know your phone numbers?’

  Carmela was thoughtful. ‘There’s a list of our landline phone numbers in the basement for the caretaker to use in emergencies. Anyone who lives here, or visits here, could get hold of it. The caretaker did ask me for my mobile number as well, but I made him promise to keep it under lock and key.’

  The girl lifted her fists to the ceiling. ‘Why is somebody doing this to us?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’ said Bea. ‘Why the cards, the nuisance calls, the vandalism? Why was Sir Lucas’s car keyed and the cat killed?’

  ‘What!’ The girl shot upright.

  The boy took the wodge of red tissue from his nose. ‘It’s stopped bleeding,’ he said. ‘The car, we knew about. Laughed ourselves sick. That was Tariq, of course. He admitted it the other night when he was pissed.’

  ‘Childish,’ said the girl. ‘Lady Ossett overreacted. The noise wasn’t all that loud.’

  Bea said, ‘You were at the party?’ How odd that the gossips hadn’t mentioned that fact. Perhaps they hadn’t known? So many lies and half lies . . .

  ‘Of course we were at the party. Of course Tariq did the car. You said a cat was killed? You don’t mean Momi?’

  Carmela didn’t frown because her forehead had been Botoxed to prevent such a movement, but she looked as if she’d have liked to have done
so. ‘Not Professor Jacobsen’s Momi? He must be devastated.’

  Kill an adult, and no one much cares. Kill a pet, and everyone screams for retribution. Bea nodded. ‘Poisoned.’

  The girl pushed her hair back with both hands. ‘But . . . Momi used to come down here every evening to cadge for leftovers. Salami was his favourite. Come to think of it, we haven’t seen him for oh, two or three nights. When was he here last, Connor?’

  ‘Monday night? Tuesday? No, we had Indian then, didn’t we? Momi didn’t like Indian and went off in a huff.’

  ‘How does he get in?’

  ‘Cat flap. Installed by the previous people. We’re used to him wandering in of an evening. He sticks around for a while and then goes off again. Why would anyone want to poison him?’

  ‘It’s escalating, isn’t it?’ Carmela lifted some dirty jeans from a chair and sat down. This brought her into the light. Bea had a good look at her face for the first time and caught her breath. A figure to die for. A face like a horse; an intelligent horse. A horse that had been slashed by a knife. It wasn’t a recent knife wound. Plastic surgery and Botox had alleviated the worst of the effects, but one eyelid was slightly awry.

  Bea checked to see if the boy and girl were taken aback by the distortion, but they seemed to take it for granted, so they must have been exposed to it before.

  The girl yawned, stretched. ‘Yeah, yeah. But I don’t see what we can do about it. Sorry about the mess. The cleaner’s given us notice.’

  Connor wandered over to a misty mirror to check how much blood he’d got on his face. ‘You mean that Daddy said if you weren’t going to get a job, you could clean the place yourself.’

  She kicked out at him, missing by a mile. ‘What about you, you lazy so and so? I only let you stay here because I thought you’d pull your weight financially.’

  He was aggrieved. ‘You know there’s no jobs out there for me. I’m worth more than the minimum wage.’

  Carmela said, ‘Oh, I doubt if anyone would take you on, whatever the job. They expect applicants to be clean and neat, turn up in good time and work a full eight-hour day.’

  The girl laughed. ‘She’s got you sized up, hasn’t she, Connor?’

  Carmela turned her eyes on the girl, who flushed and said, ‘So? Am I also unemployable? Daddy said he’d find me a job in one of his shops, if I wanted. But I don’t want.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ said Carmela. ‘You’d be on your feet for six hours a day and have to be polite to customers. Besides, you’d miss the booze, wouldn’t you? My brother drank himself to death, and I know better than to try to stop someone anyone else from going that way.’

  Silence.

  Carmela stood up. ‘Well, I must be going. Mrs Abbot, would you care to walk with me?’

  Bea followed the fake fur out of the fug into the comparatively clear air of the foyer. The lift doors opened, revealing the two elderly ladies dressed for the outdoors. ‘Is it safe to come out now?’

  ‘We came down earlier but there was a lot of screaming—’

  ‘She wanted to see what was happening, but I said we should wait awhile—’

  ‘So we went back upstairs till everything was quiet.’

  ‘Yes, it’s safe to come out now,’ said Carmela, almost smiling. The two older women fluttered out of the front door, nodding and smiling to Bea as they went.

  The caretaker appeared with a mop and bucket, and proceeded to put an ‘Out of Order’ notice on the lift.

  Carmela held the front door open for Bea to pass out before her.

  Ah, clean air. Well, clean for London, anyway.

  Carmela set off at a good pace. ‘Most afternoons after lunch I walk around the block and have a coffee at the Maison Blanc. Care to join me?’

  Bea looked at her watch. ‘I was due back at the office hours ago, but . . . yes, I’d love to. I take it that one of your gentlemen friends is that girl’s father – and another is Sir Lucas himself? Or perhaps they are one and the same?’

  ‘No, no. Two different men. I’ve known them both for years. To anticipate your next question; I’m a therapist, not a call girl.’

  And if you believe that, thought Bea. And then, Well, it might be true, I suppose.

  Carmela continued, ‘This scar on my face was inflicted by a manic depressive patient who stopped taking his medication and went berserk.’

  Bea nodded. That explained a lot. ‘I thought you might have business ties to Sir Lucas, despite what Lucy and Carrie had to say about you.’

  ‘Terrible gossips, aren’t they? Though their hearts are more or less in the right place.’

  ‘And Lady Ossett’s heart?’

  A frown. ‘Do you remember the Carry On film in which Julius Caesar exclaims, “Infamy, infamy; they’ve all got it in for me”?’

  ‘Vividly. What you mean is that, like Caesar in the film, the fact that Sir Lucas is paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t after his job. I suspect he’s already asked you to find out who may be conspiring with his enemies to do the dirty deed—’

  ‘I’ve told him I don’t think it’s Tariq but he won’t listen. He says I’m blinkered, don’t want to see the truth. He’s asked you to investigate instead?’

  ‘He’s told you about me?’

  ‘Indeed. And about your intelligent young protégée, whom he’s thinking he might offer a job to. Oliver? Is that his name?’

  ‘Yes. I’m against it.’

  Carmela nodded. They rounded the corner into a busy thoroughfare and turned into a high-class patisserie and coffee shop.

  ‘You’ll join me for coffee and some cake?’

  Bea decided to forget her diet for the second time that day. ‘Delighted.’

  And a good time was had by one and all.

  Eventually, Bea said, ‘Can you clear up something for me? Where would someone display business cards for call girls around here? And would just any stationers print them up?’

  ‘The girls’ pimps pop them inside the nearest public telephone boxes every day, to catch the eye of tourists or . . . well, anyone with an itch to satisfy. And, yes; any jobbing printer would turn them out for you.’

  ‘And the ones dumped in your letter boxes at the flats?’

  ‘Printed locally, yes. I visited a couple of places which I thought might have produced them. The managers wouldn’t confirm that they’d been responsible, but pointed out that they hadn’t broken any law if they had.’

  Quite so.

  Finally, replete with cake and coffee, Bea accessed her mobile phone to see if there were any messages on it. Yes. Two. Maggie to say she’d be returning to her mother’s that night, and someone at the agency to say there were a couple of matters which needed to be looked at, but they could wait till the morning. Nothing from Oliver.

  ‘I must go,’ said Bea. ‘But before I do; I believe Sir Lucas owns the freehold of the building. Does he select his tenants personally?’

  ‘He buys up the leases as they fall in and grants short tenancies to people he likes the look of. Just two of the existing residents have long leases that predate his purchase of the freehold and have refused his offer to buy them out.’

  ‘Professor Jacobsen and one of the gossips?’

  ‘One of them. Can’t remember which. The other one bought the remains of a longer lease from someone who was moving away. He owns my flat, of course. He’s let a ground floor flat to that silly girl’s father, and another up top to the people who’ve gone abroad and sublet to Tariq. That young man will be out on his ear soon since he’s lost his job and can’t keep up with the rent.’

  ‘Do you think Tariq keyed Lucas’s car?’

  ‘It seems most likely.’

  ‘Lady Ossett believes that this separation from her husband is all a pretence. I’m not so sure, myself. Except, of course, that he’s left the Lucian Freud portrait in situ.’

  Carmela picked her words with care. ‘I suppose that, if he did intend to leave her, the insurance people would have to be consul
ted before it could be removed.’

  ‘Do you think he’s already selected another wife? Someone younger, perhaps?’

  A shrug. ‘We are talking hypothetically here. I imagine that if he were looking for another wife, he would want someone with her own money.’

  ‘Have you any idea when he intends to inform his current wife that their marriage is over?’

  A shrug. ‘You go too fast for me. If he were thinking of divorce, then I suppose he might keep up the pretence until he’s dealt with the snake in the grass at headquarters.’

  Bea leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s like watching a chess-master at work. A bloodless coup. Only, I think Lady Ossett will probably bleed quite badly.’

  Another shrug, dismissing the subject. ‘My treat, by the way.’ Carmela handed the bill and some notes to a hovering waitress.

  Bea gathered herself together. The thought of going back to the agency did not excite, and something was bothering her. She tried to think what it was.

  ‘Carmela, is the lift at the flats often out of service?’

  A shrug. ‘The caretaker likes to give it a good clean once a week.’ A frown. ‘Usually early in the morning after the business people have left, and while the rest of us are having breakfast.’

  ‘Do you mind if I come back with you for a moment? The lift shouldn’t be out of service at this time of day, should it? Also, I’d like to ask the caretaker why he didn’t intervene when an intruder forced himself on the people in the ground floor flat. I thought he was supposed to keep an eye on, well, everything.’

  Carmela hissed something between her teeth and picked up her handbag. ‘He has Sir Lucas’s best interests at heart. I’m sure he can explain . . . if there’s anything to explain, that is.’ She led the way out of the cafe and turned up the road. ‘This is the quickest way, through the alley at the back of the shops, and then round to the front.’

  As Carmela let them into the building, Bea saw that the ‘Out of Order’ notice was still on the lift door handle. There was no sign of the caretaker.

  Something which looked like a broomstick prevented the door of the lift from closing completely.

  Carmela said, ‘Yes, that is odd. Shall I raise the caretaker?’