Dark Mirror (31 page)

She called a contact at Interpol and asked for information on Marion Summers on Corsica on the weekend before she died, then began searching the police databases for information on Douglas Warrender. There was a concise biography in the current
Who’s Who
, with his present post listed as Managing Director of Mallory Capital, education at Oxford (BA Hons PPE 1969) and Harvard (MBA 1972), and current address at Mallory Capital, St James’s Square, London SW1.

Towards midday she got word from Interpol that Marion had been registered for two nights in a small hotel, Les Voyagers, in the centre of Bastia.

Kathy was suddenly ravenous, hungrier than she’d felt for ages, and was thinking about lunch when her mobile phone rang. Hoping that it was Guy, she answered eagerly. ‘Hello?’

The person at the other end paused, then spoke in a soft voice that she didn’t recognise. ‘Detective Inspector Kolla?’

‘Yes?’

‘My name is Douglas Warrender. I believe we should meet.’

Kathy stiffened in her chair. ‘Concerning what?’

The man gave a little grunt of amusement, then said, ‘My wife tells me that you were asking about my relationship with Marion Summers. She—my wife—gave me your number.’

‘I can set up an appointment for you to come in and make a statement, Mr Warrender.’

‘No, not that. I’d rather meet you off the record, an informal chat, to explain a few things.’ The words were mildly stressed, but Kathy picked up the tone of command in the voice. ‘I think it might save you a lot of time and effort,’ he added.

‘Where did you have in mind?’

‘I’m presently sitting on a bench in St James’s Park, just a short walk from your office. It’s a pleasant morning, quite warm. You might like to join me. Say in ten minutes?’

Kathy rang off, wondering how he knew she was at work that morning, or how he expected them to recognise each other. But he did, rising to his feet at the same moment that she recognised the face she’d found on the internet. It didn’t really do him justice, she realised, as she walked across the grass towards the bench beneath a spreading plane tree; the image on the web had been rather bland, but in life he seemed forceful and intelligent, regarding her with shrewd, calculating eyes. Kathy wondered if
Marion had seen some echo of Rossetti in him.

He held out his hand, and they sat.

‘You have a recorder?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s up to you, but I shall speak more freely if this conversation is not recorded.’ He seemed quite open, rather relaxed.

Kathy held his eyes for a moment, then nodded and took the machine out of her pocket and laid it on the seat between them. He reached forward and switched it off.

‘Thank you. You’re interested to know if Marion had a lover, I understand. She did. It was me.’ He paused. ‘You’re not surprised, I see.’

Kathy said nothing, and he went on.

‘We first became interested in each other last October. It was a stormy day, I remember, a Saturday, the wind lashing the trees. She had come to our house for a work session with my wife, and Sophie was late getting home from whatever she was doing. Marion and I had a coffee and began to talk, and very quickly we both realised that we found something compelling in each other. I rang her the next day and asked if she’d have lunch with me, and that was how it began.’

Kathy watched him, trying to imagine herself as Marion, becoming
interested
. She noticed the fleshy cheeks, the wings of grey hair behind the ears, groomed to look casually unselfconscious. Maybe it was unfair, comparing him to Guy, but he wasn’t her idea of
compelling
. But he must have represented something that Marion wanted—or had it only been about money?

‘We became lovers. But it was grubby, inconvenient. Brief meetings in hotel rooms soon lose their charm, and her student friends interrogated her when she went back to her flat. Also there was a problem with her tutor and her stepfather, both pestering her. So I bought her somewhere more agreeable, a refuge, where
we could be ourselves, together. You’ve been there, I understand, with Sophie.’

The raised eyebrow was almost teasing, Kathy thought, with the implication,
You took my wife to see my mistress’s love-nest
.

‘It cost you three-quarters of a million,’ Kathy said.

‘Mm? Yes. So?’

‘That’s a lot of money.’

He looked amused. ‘Well, I was very attached to her. But . . . do they give you a Christmas bonus, Inspector? No? Well, that represented less than half of mine last year. A small price to pay for a true passion, a meeting of souls.’

‘Aren’t you bothered that her mother and stepfather will get it now, your Christmas bonus?’

He looked more serious suddenly. ‘Marion signed a document, making it over to me in the event of her death. It was her idea. She didn’t like the thought of the Raffertys getting their hands on it any more than I did. Of course we didn’t imagine it would ever have to be invoked. The money was nothing. She meant much more to me than that, Kathy. Let’s be frank.’

Kathy flinched at his use of her first name, and she saw him register this. ‘Go on.’

‘That’s it, really. She moved into Rosslyn Court in January, and I visited her there whenever I could. It was a wonderful haven for me, away from the pressures of work and the strains at home.’

‘What about Sophie?’

‘Ah . . .’ He spread his hands, his face taking on a look of philosophical detachment. ‘Sophie is a marvellous woman, terrific author, very focused on her work and at the same time a great mother—but she doesn’t really need me, not any more. Nor I her.’

‘Did she know about Marion?’

‘I believe she did wonder if there might be someone else. But she never brought it up, and I felt that she had simply decided to
close her mind to that possibility. I’m certain she didn’t think it was Marion. I suspected that the month in Corsica was a kind of test. She was insistent on it, and I felt I was under observation, to see how I’d react.’

‘And how did you react?’

‘By the book. On the surface we were a perfect couple, making friends with other holidaying couples at the local restaurants, entertaining neighbours around the pool. But I was in touch with London, and missed Marion dreadfully. When she told me she’d lost her baby, I was devastated. She was distraught. I felt so helpless . . .’

He frowned, as if this was an unfamiliar and disturbing sensation.

‘I did fly back to London to see her for just one day—there was a board meeting I told Sophie I had to attend. Marion was very low, and I arranged for her to see a doctor friend. Then later I flew her out to Bastia. It was the weekend before she died. She seemed in better spirits. I spent as much time with her as I could. We drove into the hills and she picked the wild flowers. It was the last time I saw her.’

For a moment Kathy caught a vivid glimpse of Marion, in despair, giving herself up to the arrangements this strong man was making for her.

‘What about the baby?’ Kathy asked. ‘Were you planning to leave Sophie and start a new family?’

‘Yes.’ He said it decisively, but there had been a small initial hesitation.

‘And now?’

‘Well, that may rather depend on you, Inspector. My first reaction, when I heard the terrible news, was to tell everyone the truth about us. I was in shock—I suppose I still am. I wanted to declare to the world that this was the woman I loved. But as time
has passed I have come to appreciate how much other people would be hurt by that truth. And Marion is dead, so what would be the point? I was intimately involved with Marion Summers, but I had absolutely nothing to do with her death. I want to convince you of that. I have been completely frank with you, told you things that my wife does not know. I am in your power. You can tell Sophie, or not. Please think carefully before you decide.’

‘Hm.’ Kathy looked down at a squirrel loping across the grass, its tail tracing graceful loops through the air. She kicked her shoe against the ground, nagged by the feeling that she had missed something—maybe some words or intonations that had seemed out of place—but she had been concentrating so hard on catching every nuance that she’d barely had time to register them before she’d had to move on. She wished now that she had insisted on recording him. She shrugged off the thought and said, ‘Tell me about Keith Rafferty.’

•

Brock was not spending his Saturday morning with Suzanne in Battle, though he was thinking about her. It was his first day without a call from the office in weeks, and he was feeling restless and at a loose end. He had gone to the Bishop’s Mitre in the High Street near his home for a pint and a pie lunch while he read the paper, but the news was depressing and he was troubled by the way he’d left things unresolved with Suzanne. He should have been more, well,
balanced
about her sudden determination to dig into her own past. The fact was, if he cared to admit it, he had been jealous of Dougie Warrender, and Suzanne’s barely disguised eagerness to meet up again with her first big crush. He had even gone so far as to get a profile of the man from an expert in corporate affairs in the Fraud Squad. A formidable operator, was
the word, and very wealthy. ‘He had some disagreement with his father when he was at Oxford,’ he’d been told, ‘and the old man cut off his allowance for a while, so he paid his way by playing poker with the rich kids. Disarmingly straightforward, when you meet him, but don’t let that fool you. Many have, to their regret.’

He turned away from the chatter of conversation at the bar and took out his phone. Suzanne’s answering machine came on, and he left a message.

•

‘A scoundrel, well, you must know that.’ He seemed amused by her question.

‘How do you know him?’

‘Marion told me about him. She hated the way he looked at her, and tried to get her alone.’

He stopped, as if he might leave it there, but Kathy said, ‘And?’

Another little smile, as if to say,
smart girl
. ‘He would hang around the place where she lived, in Stamford Street, and follow her, spying on her. One time he trailed her to a pub where we were meeting. That must have made his day. Later he contacted me. We met, and he demanded money to keep quiet about our relationship. I persuaded him that I could make life a great deal more uncomfortable for him than he could for me. He backed off. He was one of the reasons for moving Marion out of Stamford Street.’

Another pause, before Kathy said again, ‘And?’

He looked puzzled. ‘That’s about it, I think.’

‘What about Nigel Ogilvie?’

‘Ogilvie? Oh, the little creep in the library. Yes, well, that was Rafferty’s doing, not mine. Ogilvie was there when Marion
collapsed—I suppose you know that. Apparently in the confusion he palmed a computer memory stick that fell out of her bag. It contained copies of letters that Marion and I had exchanged. He contacted me, with a view to selling it to me—for a highly inflated sum, naturally.’

‘Nigel Ogilvie, a blackmailer?’ Kathy found this hard to visualise.

‘Mm. He needed cash. He has a taste for expensive West End call girls, apparently. Did you know that?’

Kathy shook her head, readjusting her mental image of Ogilvie.

‘In his case I decided to pay—not as much as he first demanded, but we finally agreed on a more than fair price. I didn’t want to meet the man personally, but I did need to impress upon him that there must be no copies made, so I employed Keith Rafferty to make the exchange and emphasise the point. That was a mistake. I get the impression that he may have been over-emphatic.’

‘He put Ogilvie in hospital.’

‘Well I certainly didn’t ask him to do that. Does he say I did?’

Kathy didn’t reply.

‘It’s a lie if he does. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it so that he could keep a good part of the money for himself. He also has a financial weakness, in his case for the horses. Is there anything else I haven’t covered?’

‘I would like to see that memory stick.’

Warrender gave another of his easy smiles. ‘Oh would you? And why would I agree to that? It contains some very private correspondence.’

‘You want me to find out who killed Marion, don’t you?’

He gave her a bleak look. ‘Yes, I do.’ He reached a hand into the pocket of his jacket. ‘I could tell you I wiped it . . .’ He brought
out the small device. ‘This is for your eyes only, and then I want it back. I don’t want this circulating around the Met for laughs.’

‘I shall have to show my boss, and report our conversation today.’

‘DCI Brock.’ He nodded. ‘No one else? You promise?’

‘That’ll be up to him.’

He hesitated, then shrugged and handed it to her. ‘Please get him to agree.’

‘Tell me,’ Kathy said, ‘what’s your theory about what happened to Marion?’

He frowned and turned away. The squirrel was now prancing in front of a group of laughing Japanese, showing off. ‘I was rather hoping you could tell me that. You now know much more about it all than I do. What I very much do not want is for my involvement to distract you from the real culprit.’ He turned back to her and his eyes dropped to the memory stick in her hand. He seemed about to add something, then changed his mind. ‘Surely you have some idea? Won’t you tell me?’

She said nothing, and he shrugged and got to his feet.

‘I won’t say it’s been an unalloyed pleasure, Inspector. Too uncomfortable for that. But I feel easier for having told you all this.’

Kathy stared at him but he just smiled. ‘Let me know if you get tired of policing. They are plenty of opportunities for talents like yours, in jobs that give Christmas bonuses.’

He walked off across the park towards The Mall, and as she watched him go, one of the missing thoughts came back into Kathy’s mind with a jolt: he had said,
She picked the wild flowers
. Not just wild flowers, but
the
wild flowers, as if he knew about how she’d been puzzling over that posy. And the timing of his confession was odd too, days after her conversation with his wife, which in itself had hardly been challenging enough to cause him
to spill the beans about his relationship with Marion. It was almost as if he had known that she already knew about it. A sick feeling was growing in her stomach. He had known far too much.