Alex didn’t look any more comfortable than Bill Lamb felt. She hovered in the doorway from a comfortable sitting room into a kitchen where he could see brass pots and pans hanging from a ceiling rack. He had not been in Tony Harrison’s house for a long time and then only briefly. It was the kind of warm, well-furnished home he’d like himself.
Lush gardens came up to the windows on the far side of the kitchen and while Bill looked, Tony Harrison, with Radhika in front of him, came from outside through a sliding glass door. They walked directly into the sitting room and whatever uncertain thing Bill had been feeling about seeing her in this setting ebbed at the sight of Radhika’s smile.
‘Hello, Bill,’ she said. ‘Tony and Alex have a beautiful garden.’
Automatically, he held an arm out to her and she walked into his hug. Over her head he couldn’t miss the smile that passed between Alex and Tony. The time for pretending he and Radhika weren’t seriously involved was completely over. He kissed her forehead.
‘The new house will need a lot of work in the gardens,’ she said. ‘But there will be plenty of time for that.’
‘Yes,’ was all he could think of to say. They had many decisions to make and gardening was way down the list of concerns, at least for him.
Radhika moved away from him and sat on a striped brocade couch. She grew quite still and looked at the floor.
‘Bill got here as quickly as he could,’ Alex said in a rush. ‘I think a lot is starting to break in his case, so he’s been very busy.’
Radhika nodded and gave him another smile. ‘He works so hard.’
‘It took a while for your message to catch up with me,’ he said. ‘The officer who took your call said you want to tell me something, but you wouldn’t say what it was about.’
‘It could be nothing,’ she said. He was struck afresh by what a fragile figure she made even though he knew she detested giving that impression.
‘We should leave you to it,’ Tony said.
‘No!’ Radhika’s sari scarf slipped from her head and her eyes became huge. She blinked rapidly. ‘I think we are all … I would feel better if we sat as friends. Of course, if I must go to the police station to tell it, I understand.’ She started to get up.
‘Sit down, please, Radhika,’ he told her, suppressing a grin. Always proper and willing to do what was right, she could still amuse him with her very serious demeanor. ‘Let’s do what you suggest. I’m beat anyway. It can’t be that serious.’
‘I’ll make tea,’ Alex said. She all but jogged into the kitchen.
Bill took off his jacket and settled into a chair with his feet outstretched. Tony joined Radhika on the couch.
‘I’m probably not supposed to ask,’ Tony said, ‘but there hasn’t been much reported on Percy Quillam. There must have been a post-mortem by now.’
‘Under the circumstances, yes. It doesn’t always happen so quickly unless there’s a question of foul play.’
‘Murder?’ Radhika said. ‘For certain? I did hear suicide mentioned. Such a sad, difficult thing to deal with for his family.’
Bill didn’t remind her that Percy’s only daughter was dead, his only son in a psychiatric prison facility and his wife yet to be located. ‘The pathologist’s findings haven’t been made public yet,’ he said.
‘Mm.’ Tony hiked an ankle onto the opposite knee and looked thoughtful.
‘What does that mean?’ Alex asked, coming in with a tray of mugs. ‘Mm usually means something.’
‘Just having my own thoughts,’ Tony said and again Bill saw a look pass between the two.
They would know soon enough. He was surprised the word wasn’t out already. ‘Percy Quillam was murdered. It’ll be all over the press at any moment.’
Alex finished passing out tea, set the tray aside without picking up her own mug and stood with her arms folded. ‘How long had he been dead when I found him?’ she asked, and he could see what was on her mind.
‘He’d been there long enough for the killer to be well away.’ He had yet to read the final post-mortem report or speak in greater depth with Molly Lewis – the essential details had been given to him on the phone. ‘But we will know much more later.’ He concentrated on Radhika, wishing they were speaking alone and not understanding why she wanted Tony and Alex with her.
‘You must have contacted people about Percy Quillam,’ Alex said. ‘Do you know where Sonia is yet? There’s talk around the village that she’s now considered a missing person.’
Bill considered how much he could say. ‘We haven’t found Sonia. Percy’s agent – I think you’ll remember Wells Giglio – he’s coming in from Paris. He was expecting Percy to return there.’
‘So, he knew Percy had come back to the UK,’ Alex said. ‘We heard that he was ill in Paris but that must have been made up for convenience.’
‘Perhaps he knew Sonia was here,’ Radhika said, glancing at Bill, as if asking for approval, he decided. ‘He could have come to see her.’
‘Well, possibly.’ She was repeating remarks already made between his team members. Giglio was flying into Gatwick tomorrow. He said he intended to find accommodations near Green Friday, ‘In case Sonia returns,’ he’d said. On the phone, the man sounded as if he were crying.
‘Perhaps we should open our other house,’ Alex said. ‘Lime Tree Lodge. We haven’t started getting it ready to put on the market yet and it looks as if we may need additional comfortable places to put people. They can’t all stay at the Black Dog – even if that was a good idea which it isn’t with you there, Bill – and perhaps someone else from the police.’
Like Dan? Too bad you’re fond of him but not fond enough to want him as more than a friend. He misses you, Alex. ‘Could be a good idea,’ he said. And he had not failed to notice Alex referring to her house as ‘our other house’. Things were finally moving with these two.
‘Will you set up an incident room in the parish hall?’ Alex asked. ‘Gosh, I can’t believe this is happening again.’
‘Possibly the parish hall. As to the other.’ He shrugged. ‘We are a society of our times and they’re complex. And let’s not forget that this time the players have some definite connections to an old case in the area.’ He knew he got too comfortable with these people, perhaps talked too freely.
Without warning, Radhika got to her feet and stood in front of him. The anguish on her face shocked him.
‘No,’ she said when he went to get up. ‘Please, stay there. I’ll speak fast and get this to you. I have been very foolish, Bill. There are photographs I have brought to give you, but it is not that. It is the woman. I saw her.’ She put a hand over her mouth.
He got up and took her by the arms. ‘Calm down, please. Nothing is so bad it should make you suffer, Radhika.’
‘It isn’t,’ Tony broke in. ‘Here are the photos.’ He came and thrust them into Bill’s hands.
‘Hugh?’ He turned the first one over and saw the words, ‘My Hugh’ on the back. Damn it, he should have had this when they interviewed the man, but there would be a next time.
The blurred second photo was of a man in front of a multi-colored wall of some kind. It would have to be dealt with by the lab and, he hoped, turned into something useful.
‘I’m the one who made a stupid mistake,’ Alex said. ‘They were found by Sam Brock among that woman’s things at Green Friday. He gave them to me and I should have turned them over to you, but I put them down at the Black Dog, couldn’t find them afterward and thought they had been thrown away.
‘Scoot Gammage had picked them up and been nervous it could spell trouble for Hugh. His brother, Kyle, took them to Radhika this morning. He works at the clinic after school some days and trusts her. He was really scared they’d get into trouble.’
‘I told him it would be all right,’ Radhika all but whispered.
‘OK,’ he said, glancing at Alex. Now he had a second apparently guilt-ridden woman on his hands. ‘We’ll get all this sorted and recorded properly.’ And they might have to have a more formal discussion since Alex’s explanation was more than sketchy.
‘Please let me tell you,’ Radhika said, looking up at him. ‘As you know, the tower at the Trap Lane house is finished. I like to look out of the window at the top because I can see so far and it makes me happy.
‘On the day Alex came to visit me and see the house, she left when it was getting quite dark. There are no lights in the lane and it winds so she didn’t stay too long. I watched the headlights of her car when she started driving down.
‘I can see Green Friday, the house – where the driveway widens there, and the steps. My tower is closer to Green Friday than you might think. There is a light that comes on over the front door when it gets dark. A woman came there – from inside – and she looked wild. She walked, then she ran a step, and stumbled and kept going. She may have been without shoes. I didn’t see her for long at all. Perhaps only seconds. But I should have made sure she was all right, only I judged her. I thought she was drunk and perhaps not behaving well, so I turned away.
‘Bill, could she have been the woman who is missing?’
Shit, who knew what another human being would think of or do in any situation? ‘I don’t know, my love, I don’t know. Can you tell me anything about her, anything at all? How big she might have been? How old? What she was wearing?’ He decided not to mention the anonymous call by someone claiming to have seen Hugh in the driveway at Green Friday.
Radhika was pale beneath her golden skin. She repeatedly shook her head, no, then said, ‘I cannot be sure, Bill. I am so sorry. She was not old. Long, bright hair but I couldn’t see her face. She wore something very rich. Like the color of ripe persimmons, I thought.’