‘So how can I help you?’ asked Detective Chief Inspector Julie Morgan, after a little preliminary banter in which she’d volunteered, almost flirtatiously, that she was a fan of Francis’s work. Now she leant forward from the black leather chair that was about the only decent bit of furniture in this makeshift incident room, tucked away at the back of a trading estate behind the Dewkesbury ring road. She was in her own screened-off corner, but it wasn’t much protected from the noise beyond, where a string of six or so plain-clothes officers made phone calls and exchanged banter as they worked at computer screens. ‘Or rather,’ she added, ‘how can you help us? I gather you have some new information.’
‘We do,’ said Francis, glancing over at Priya, who looked both businesslike and sexy this morning in a tight-fitting black suit and knee-high boots. In the cold light of day, he was proud of the self-control he’d exhibited in the small hours.
‘OK,’ said Julie, putting up steepled hands to cover her mouth, ‘I’m listening.’ Close up, she looked more life-battered than when seen from a distance. That mane of dark hair contained a good few grey strands; through her Touche Eclat the bags under her eyes were black.
‘As you know,’ Francis replied, ‘Priya here was Bryce’s girlfriend.’
‘Yes, and we’ve been grateful for your cooperation and your very helpful statement, Ms Kaur. Which you now want to add to, is that right?’
‘May I ask first,’ Francis chipped in, ‘are you still treating both these deaths as murder enquiries?’
‘As a professional crime writer, Mr Meadowes, I’m sure you understand that all the details of our investigation have to remain confidential until we either arrest and charge suspects or else establish that there is no reason to pursue further enquiries.’
‘I thought you might say that. But I imagine you are treating the two deaths as linked?’
DCI Julie’s impatience was tangible. ‘I’d love to spend the morning gassing with you about these cases, but as you see we’re pretty frantic out here. I was told you had some important new information for us.’
‘We do. In relation to that, have you had the post-mortem results for Grace yet?’
‘I really can’t comment, Mr Meadowes. Now please, what is this “crucial new evidence” you mentioned to DS Povey over the phone?’
‘Priya, d’you want to tell the Chief Inspector what Bryce was planning to talk about on Sunday afternoon? To his eager public and any representatives of the national press who were in the audience?’
Francis enjoyed watching the DCI’s face as Priya filled her in.
‘I see,’ said Julie, when she’d finished. ‘And you seriously think that these revelations would have been damaging enough to make someone of Jonty Smallbone’s calibre contemplate murder?’
‘Yes,’ said Francis.
‘With all due respect, Mr Meadowes, this isn’t a George Braithwaite novel. What you’ve given me is pure speculation. I was told you had evidence.’
‘There should have been a copy of Bryce’s speech in our room somewhere,’ said Priya. ‘As well as drafts on his laptop – and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation.’
‘That should be easy enough to check.’ DCI Julie pressed a button on her phone. ‘Steve. Can you come round here please.’
It was the same DS whom Francis had first seen in the dining room of the White Hart, the blond prop-forward with the thick eyebrows. No, Steve said, once the DCI had brought him up to speed, he wasn’t aware of a hard copy of any speech having been found in Room 29. ‘So what are we looking for on the laptop?’ he asked.
‘In his main Documents section Bryce had a folder called Talks,’ Priya said. ‘It would almost certainly have been in there, probably called something like Mold Festival Talk rather than Celebrity and Hypocrisy, which was the title in the programme.’
‘OK, Steve,’ said DCI Julie. ‘Quick as you can on that, please. We’ll see what he comes up with,’ she said, once DS Wright had gone. ‘But even if this speech does turn up or we find a draft on the computer, and it’s as damning as you say it is, it’s hardly evidence of murder, is it? At best, it’s circumstantial.’
‘Bear with us,’ said Francis, ‘because this leads directly to the second thing we wanted to share with you. Grace phoned her newspaper at three fifteen on Sunday afternoon to tell her editor that she was about to email a seriously damaging story about a major celebrity.’
Now they had got the DCI’s full attention. ‘So how did you know about this?’ she asked.
‘We spoke to the editor. Priya also works for the Sentinel, so we were able to do it informally.’
‘And this editor hadn’t thought of telling the police?’
‘No,’ said Priya. ‘He’s up in London. He wasn’t sure whether he should.’
‘Of course he should. When did he contact you about it?’
‘He didn’t. We contacted him.’
‘I don’t quite follow,’ said Julie.
Francis looked over at Priya. She shrugged. But her eyes and pinched mouth said: Tell her, whatever the consequences for the others.
‘We found out about all this,’ Francis said, ‘because we were talking to some of the young people who were out at Wyveridge on Sunday. Grace apparently came back to the Hall at around half three in a state of excitement and told them that she had this scoop and she was going upstairs to file it.’
‘File it? I’m sorry. Where?’
‘“File” is journo-speak for “send it to her newspaper”,’ said Francis.
‘I see. And this was at half past three?’
‘Around that time, yes.’
Julie had already pressed the buzzer on her desk. ‘Brian. Could you come in here, please.’
Now DS Brian Povey appeared round the corner. Today he was casual in jeans and a blue T-shirt that read DIVE CAYMAN over some badly drawn tropical fish. He nodded a hello to Francis and Priya.
‘You supervised the Wyveridge statements, didn’t you?’ Julie said.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I thought you said there was nobody out there after one thirty except for the housekeeper and gardener.’
‘That’s what we were told.’
‘I think a couple of the guys might have got their timings a bit wrong,’ Priya said. ‘One thirty is what they told us too, at first. Then they remembered that they’d left for town mid-afternoon.’
‘They remembered,’ said Julie scornfully. ‘Who exactly are we talking about here?’
‘I’d rather hold back on that information for the time being,’ said Francis, looking over at Priya.
Julie sucked in her breath. Her fingers tapped impatiently on her desk. ‘Your call,’ she said. ‘But we will obviously need to know at some point …’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Francis. You scratch my back, he thought. ‘Now we realise,’ he went on, ‘that you guys took away pretty much all of Grace’s stuff from the room she was sleeping in. So, may I ask, was there anything on her laptop that would show either that she’d started writing this email to her editor, or that she had in fact written it?’
‘That’s easily found out,’ said Julie. ‘What’s the editor’s name?’
‘Matt … Matthew Ashcombe,’ said Priya.
‘Check that out for us, would you please, Brian?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The DS turned on his heel and departed.
DCI Julie turned back to Francis and Priya. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s just see if I’ve got your theory right. You’re saying that Jonty Smallbone, the well-known TV personality, having done away with Bryce in order to safeguard his priceless reputation, then goes out to Wyveridge Hall at tea time on Sunday and somehow persuades this young journalist to take hallucinogenic drugs. Having established a believable cause of death, he takes her up onto the battlements with him and pushes her off?’
‘More or less,’ Francis replied. So they had had Grace’s post-mortem back; and by the sounds of it found hallucinogens in her bloodstream. Had Julie slipped up, or just decided it was time to cooperate? ‘Though there wasn’t necessarily any persuasion involved,’ he added. ‘Grace could have been given such drugs unwittingly – or even, more likely, after she died.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Julie. ‘That the murderer fed them to her as she lay dead on the ground?’
‘Seems like the most likely supposition. Given that all of them agree she wasn’t a drug taker.’
‘Interesting …’ For a moment Francis thought Julie was about to share something else with them; but then the professional mask descended again. ‘The main question then is this,’ she continued. ‘Whether Grace had taken drugs or not, knowingly or not, why did she agree to go up on the battlements with Jonty when she was supposed to be writing an urgent story for her newspaper? I mean, did she even know him?’
‘She’d met him,’ said Francis. ‘At a party that was held at Wyveridge Hall on Saturday evening. She also interviewed him on Sunday morning, about his reactions to Bryce’s death. But you’re right, she didn’t know him well. However, there is a close associate of his whom she might have been much more likely to trust: Jonty’s ghostwriter, Anna Copeland.’
‘Anna!’ said Priya, leaning forward. ‘You think she was involved?’
‘Hang on,’ said DCI Julie. ‘You’ve lost me. Who’s this …?’
‘Anna Copeland,’ Francis repeated. ‘She’s a ghostwriter, who’s “worked with” Jonty on several of his books, including his most recent, Wild Stuff.’
‘You’re saying she wrote it for him?’ said Julie.
‘In a word, yes. Now Anna has also been staying at the White Hart, along with her new boyfriend, Marvin Blake, an ex-Marine who’s also a client of hers.’
‘The black fellow?’ said Julie, and then looked immediately as if she wished she’d phrased it another way. ‘I mean …’
Francis put her out of her misery. ‘Muscly geezer who looks as if he could strangle you with his bare hands – or in his case his bare four fingers. He’s a bit of a romantic departure for Anna. Before that, she was, for a long while, the girlfriend of Bryce Peabody.’
Now the DCI looked puzzled. ‘My information was that Bryce’s, er, long-term partner was Scarlett – hang on, where’s my list?’
‘Paton-Jones, yes,’ said Francis. ‘As Priya here can confirm, Bryce’s love life was a bit complicated. Besides his partner, he also had a girlfriend.’
‘I thought that was you, Ms Kaur?’
‘Another one,’ said Francis.
‘Another one!’
‘I replaced her,’ said Priya.
‘And the partner?’
‘Both of them.’ Priya explained about the open marriage, Anna, and her ultimatum.
‘Crikey!’ said DCI Julie, when she’d finished. ‘Good for you.’
Priya shrugged and smiled weakly. ‘It was a high-risk strategy. But it worked.’
‘So how did Anna take that?’ asked DCI Julie.
Priya looked over at Francis. ‘You’ve spoken to her recently,’ she said. ‘You probably know better than me.’
‘She was furious,’ Francis said. ‘She’d been Bryce’s loyal bit on the side for five years and suddenly along comes Priya here and gets him to leave Scarlett within three weeks.’
DCI Julie whistled. ‘Pretty gutting. So what did she do?’
Francis explained, sparing no detail, especially not the invasion of Bryce’s workplace.
‘OK,’ said Julie, ‘so she was happy for everyone to know she hated him. Doesn’t make her a murderer, though, does it?’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Francis. ‘However –’
The door had swung open. Steve Wright was back, hovering with a heavy-looking laptop. ‘Yes, Steve?’ said Julie.
‘This is Bryce’s Dell, ma’am. I’ve booted it up and given it a cursory search, but there’s nothing under Celebrity and Hyprocrisy or Mold Talks or even anything with Mold in the title. I’ve also been through the inventory and we haven’t found a hard copy of a speech either. Anywhere.’
‘Could I just have a peep?’ Priya looked hopefully at the DCI.
Julie nodded and Steve put the machine down on the edge of the desk. Priya’s hands were shaking visibly and she was breathing deeply. For a moment Francis thought she might be about to break down again.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Seeing all these icons on his desktop. It’s almost like he’s back.’
‘Take your time,’ said DCI Julie.
Priya clicked open Documents and found a file called Talks and Lectures.
‘Here it is,’ she said, opening it; and there, listed, were all the things Bryce had done recently. Critics Circle Lunch. Bath Festival. Ways With Words. Hay. Bogstandard After-Dinner (funny). There was nothing about Celebrity and Hypocrisy or Mold. ‘This is very odd,’ she said. ‘All the other festivals he’s given talks at are here. I’ll run a wider search for Celebrity.’
This brought up a raft of documents.
Celebrity autobiographies – the horror goes on
Too Many Celebrity Chefs Spoil the Jus
Celebrity Chocaholics
Nothing New Under The Sun – Celebs of the 1890s.
‘Hang on, what’s this?’ said Priya. ‘Double Standards of Celebrities. Author. Bryce Peabody. File: More Serious Work. Date created: 20/12 … that’s way back last December. Date modified: 17/1. Let’s have a look.’
She double-clicked and they all leant into the screen as it opened.
Celebrity culture is no longer optional. However much we struggle to avoid its cheesy embrace, it is there waiting for us. We can give up newspapers and magazines. We can give up radio and television. But wherever we turn, the tinsel gods and goddesses of Medialand pursue us, yelling from every white van parked on every corner, forcing their all too tedious ‘secrets’ upon us …
Francis’s eyes flicked down the page. ‘And as if all this wasn’t enough,’ he read out loud, ‘there lies, at the heart of each and every one of these narratives, an undeniable hypocrisy … You’re right, Priya. This is it. Don’t you think?’
‘The germ of it,’ said Priya. ‘Once Bryce realised it was going to be a talk rather than a piece he’d have transferred it to the Talks file.’ She paused and looked around at the waiting trio. Her eyes were bright, her lips in a resolute pout. ‘I’d say somebody’s been at this computer. Deleted all the drafts of the talk itself, but didn’t realise that this was there too, in a different file.’
‘Mightn’t Bryce have deleted these drafts himself?’ asked Julie. ‘Once he’d printed up his speech and was about to deliver it?’
‘No way,’ said Priya. ‘For a start, he’d have wanted the latest one there, so he could add in any changes in the morning. And then, knowing Bryce, he’d have hung onto everything for ages anyway.’
She clicked on the icon in Talks which read Bath Festival. It opened to reveal a long list of files. ‘See,’ she said, ‘Bath Festival 1, 2, 3 … Seventeen drafts of that one. All still there. And Bath was back in March.’
‘So what are you saying?’ asked Julie. ‘That Jonty deleted them?’
Priya shrugged. ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? And then removed the hard copy from the room.’
‘Removing his motive at the same time,’ said Francis.
Julie turned to the waiting DS. ‘OK Steve. Could you get this over to Dipika in Bristol, please. Right away. We’re looking for anything with Mold Talk or Celebrity and Hypocrisy in the title.’ She turned back to Francis and Priya. ‘These techies are pretty impressive. If a file has ever been registered on the hard disk they can usually find it.’
As Steve left the room with one laptop, Brian came in with another. This one was far smarter, a slim, brushed-aluminium machine. ‘Grace Pritchard’s Macbook, ma’am,’ said Brian. ‘I’ve had a quick shufti through her email, but there was nothing sent to anyone after nine forty-three a.m. on the Sunday. That was also the last time the Inbox was checked.’
‘Sounds like she didn’t even get to switch it on,’ said Julie.
‘And yet,’ said Priya, ‘Rory and co. told us she went straight upstairs from seeing them.’
‘Rory and co.?’ asked Julie.
Francis met Priya’s eye. What was she playing at? But her shrug was only a little apologetic. ‘She’s going to have to know sooner or later,’ she said.
‘These are the young people who left Wyveridge mid-afternoon but told us otherwise?’ said Julie.
‘Yes,’ said Priya.
‘What do we have on that, Brian?’
The DS consulted his notebook. ‘I was coming to that. The last people who claimed to be there, apart from Mrs Macpherson the housekeeper and Gunther Bachmeier the gardener, were three of the resident house party: Rory McCarthy, Neville Tanner and Eva Edelstein. Who all concurred on leaving for town at one thirty p.m. after a late breakfast.’
‘Which you’re now saying wasn’t true?’ Julie asked Priya.
‘They left later. They saw Grace, basically.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes. Not that they wanted us to know that.’
‘That would tie in with the housekeeper’s evidence, ma’am,’ said Brian. ‘She told us there were people in the house when she knocked off at two.’
‘You hadn’t followed up this anomaly?’
‘I’d only just got to it, ma’am.’
Julie gave him an impatient glance. ‘OK, I think we’d better get onto those three, please, Brian. Right away.You can bring them in if you like.’
‘Ma’am.’ He turned on his heel.
‘You’re going to arrest them?’ said Priya, when he’d gone.
‘Lying on a police statement is perverting the course of justice. We don’t necessarily have to charge them. Just make them aware we don’t like timewasters and see how helpful they want to be, obviously without leaning on them in any way that might be prejudicial to their evidence.’ She sat forward with a smile.
‘Rory McCarthy in particular will take that threat very seriously indeed,’ said Francis. ‘As he’s doing his pupillage in a barrister’s chambers at present.’
‘Is he now?’ said Julie. ‘So he knew exactly what he was up to – lying on a statement. You’re making me wonder why he didn’t want us to know that they’d seen Grace.’
‘I don’t think he was involved, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ said Francis. ‘Not directly, anyhow. Can we talk in total confidence?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think he had other worries. Relating to his future as a barrister.’
‘Such as?’
‘The recreational use of certain Class A substances, perhaps?’
This brought a bark of laughter from Julie. ‘We know the place was awash with drugs. They flushed the whole lot down the toilet a few minutes before we got there. Little realising that the drainage system for Wyveridge runs into a big cesspit in the field below the house. But busting a few poshies for possession isn’t really what I’m interested in just now. The question is, was that concern by itself enough to make Rory lie about the time he left for town? And presumably persuade his two buddies to lie also. Or was there more he didn’t want us to know? You don’t have any useful theories about that?’
‘Not at the moment, no,’ said Francis, not meeting Julie’s eye, though he was aware of her looking slowly from him to Priya and back again. After a moment Julie said: ‘Hopefully he may be able to tell us more when we talk to him.’ She rubbed her hands briskly, then leant back in her chair. ‘In the spirit of ongoing cooperation, I might as well tell you that we also had a call from Grace on Sunday afternoon.’
‘Did you,’ said Francis, leaning forward. ‘Saying what?’
‘That she had something important she wanted to share with us.’
‘And you didn’t take that seriously?’
‘We were going to see her at six p.m. on Sunday. At the White Hart.’ DCI Julie leant down and pulled up a large handbag from the floor, rummaged around and produced a pair of business cards. ‘If there’s anything else you happen to remember,’ she said, ‘my mobile number’s on there.’
‘Thanks,’ said Francis, pulling out his wallet and producing a card of his own. ‘Before we go,’ he added. ‘Is there any chance you could tell your uniformed guard dog out at Wyveridge to let us through? There’s a few things inside the house I’d like to check out.’
‘Which uniformed guard dog is that?’
‘Shaven-headed gentleman. Looks as if he enjoys his food.’
The DCI laughed. ‘Stan’s nickname in the force is Pieman.’ She considered them both for a few moments. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll make an exception for you. On the strict condition that anything you find, you share. Agreed?’
‘Of course,’ said Francis. ‘May I also ask: was the memory card still in the video camera when you found it? And if so did it survive the fall?’
For a moment Julie looked taken aback. Then her face relaxed. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘On balance, not. But sometimes that kind of data can be quite resilient.’
‘The card was there. We took it out hoping for the best and discovered the worst. It was irretrievably damaged. But not, the SOCO guys seemed to think, in the fall.’
‘How d’you mean?’ asked Priya.
‘Somebody had tampered with it, either before or after it was chucked over. It had been stamped on, they thought, by some kind of hard shoe.’
‘Oh my god!’ said Priya. ‘He wanted that footage destroyed.’
DCI Julie nodded at her. ‘That’s rather what we thought.’
‘May I chance one final question,’ Francis asked, as he rose to his feet.
DCI Julie was shaking her head in mock-wonder. ‘Now I see where Braithwaite gets it from,’ she said. ‘OK then – try me.’
‘Was the hallucinogenic drug in Grace’s bloodstream psilocybin or lysergic acid diethylamide?’
Julie returned his gaze for several long seconds. ‘Both drugs were present,’ she said eventually. ‘But the pathologist found that at the point of death the ingestion of neither of them was very well advanced.’
‘I see,’ said Francis.
Julie smiled and put her hands flat on the table. ‘Since I’m being so helpful I might as well share this with you too. In strictest confidence, of course. When the SOCO guys examined Grace’s body they found a splash of liquid on her dress which turned out to contain psilocybin. Which would tie in rather well with your theory about post-mortem ingestion, wouldn’t it, Francis?’
‘Certainly would,’ Francis replied. He looked over at Priya, who was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Before we go,’ he added, ‘I think both of us would appreciate it if you didn’t mention your sources to Rory and his friends.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Julie. ‘Chatham House Rules all round. And do please let me know what else you find. However inconsequential it may seem.’