False Charity (33 page)

‘He might be with a girl. I don't understand why the police should want to home in on Noel now. The hotel people wouldn't have called them in, would they?' She answered her own question. ‘No, of course not. They don't know where to find him and anyway, they stand to lose too much. That Abbot woman is not the sort to double-cross us. No, the presence of the police is nothing to do with Noel.'

‘I don't believe that and neither do you, really. As the man said, Noel's running out of control. We know he's killed before. Suppose he's killed again?'

She made a move to get out of the car. ‘He wouldn't. He couldn't. The police, the ambulances, they're nothing to do with him. Someone's been taken ill, that's all.'

He reached out and held on to her arm. ‘Hold it right there. We don't want to walk into an ambush, do we? You stay here. Take off your wig and make-up, put on one of the jackets I keep in the back of the car. I'll see if I can find out what's happening.' He took off his dinner jacket, fished a dark sweater out from the back of the car, and pulled it on. Then he set off down the street, hands in pockets, a man out taking a stroll in the dark.

Lena did as she was bid, transforming herself from glamorous party-goer to elderly frump. Her own hair was pepper and salt, fading from red. The jacket she huddled into was too large, but covered her evening dress. She sat on in the car, fidgeting, her iron control breaking up.

Ten minutes. She kept looking at her watch. Fifteen. She'd give Richie one more minute and then go looking for him.

Richie slid back into the car. ‘The ambulances stopped outside the flats. A man was being helped into the first one when I arrived. I couldn't see his face. A small man, elderly. A policeman went with him. That ambulance was driven off straight away. Then after a few minutes, Noel was brought down in handcuffs, between two policemen. It looked as if they'd been in a fight.'

‘Oh, no! Poor Noel! What have they done to him?'

‘You'd best ask what he did to the policeman who went in the ambulance with him. Cracked his jaw, I think. There's not just one but three police cars outside now. There's not enough cover around for me to stick around, but I spotted a couple we know slightly, they live in one of the top floor flats, looks as if they've just come back from an evening out. They're talking to another couple of policemen.'

‘Which means …?'

‘It means Noel's been losing his temper again. First the elderly man, and then a policeman. You might be able to talk the police out of charging Noel for attacking an old man, but not out of assaulting one of their own.'

‘Noel's hurt?'

‘Walking wounded. Whatever he's done or not done, he's in police custody, and that means the flat's out of bounds.'

As the truth of this sank in, Lena ground her teeth. ‘My clothes, my jewellery, my laptop.' At this she stifled a cry. ‘My laptop! If I can't get at that … no, I have the passwords in my notebook, don't I? I can still cancel the payment, and then we can get a good lawyer to represent Noel, and replace everything we've lost.'

She scrabbled in her evening bag, upending it on her lap. With nervous fingers she sought for that all-important notebook, but it was not there. As the truth sunk in, she whimpered. ‘I must have dropped it at the hotel!'

‘Surely, you can go to the bank on Monday and—'

She was becoming hysterical. ‘Idiot! I'd have to prove my identity, show them bills, credit cards, chequebooks, all that sort of thing, and that's all back at the flat. I haven't even got my credit cards on me.'

He fished a wallet out of his pocket. ‘I've some.'

‘Yes, but they don't identify me, do they? If they've got Noel … we don't know for what or if it's safe to … those dreadful people at the hotel said that if he did anything else … they'll testify against him and I'm sure those women egged him on and …'

He scratched a bristly chin. ‘There's the small matter of the barman as well. You can't deny that Noel killed him.'

‘It wasn't murder, it was manslaughter, it was a mistake.' She was feverish. ‘Anyway, there's no way the police can connect the barman with us. I'm sure it's safe to go back to the flat.'

‘You know it isn't. Sorry, Lena, but I'm overruling you on this. We'll go out to my brother in Greenwich for the rest of the night. I've got a bag of my things out there already, remember? His wife can lend you some clothes, and tomorrow you can find out what's happened to Noel, what they've got him for. Then you can get him a brief, who'll see if he can get Noel out on bail, right? Only then can you judge whether it's safe to go back to the flat or not.'

‘But our flights are for tomorrow.'

‘Forget it,' he said, starting up the car again. ‘Passports, tickets, access to the money, everything's out of reach.'

She whispered to herself, rather than to him, ‘What are we going to do?'

‘There's Noel's camera in the back, and the money he took for the photographs.'

‘If he gets bail, he'll need his camera.'

‘If he's assaulted a policeman, he won't get bail.'

Silence. She didn't want to believe him.

He said, ‘Whether he gets bail or not, I think I'll go back up north. I can always get gigs in the working men's clubs. Come with me?'

Her brain was starting to work again. ‘What would I do up there? I need to stay down here to see what I can do for Noel. I'll get myself some decent clothes from second-hand boutiques or charity shops. I know someone who runs an escort agency and would be glad to have me work for her. That's more in my line.'

He nodded but he was thinking that she was probably getting a bit long in the tooth for that kind of work. Once or twice over the years, he'd thought of offering to marry her, but he knew – deep down – that it would never work.

Sunday, morning

Bea slept late, showered, pulled on some casual clothes, brushed her hair but didn't bother with make-up. She yawned her way down to the kitchen in a bemused state. She could hardly believe what had happened the previous night. Had they really faced down a gang of con men and come out on the winning side? Perhaps she'd dreamed it. But if she hadn't dreamed it, any credit due must go to Oliver.

And oh, poor Maggie. When they'd got back from the hotel, Bea had helped the girl in and out of a hot shower, and then put her to bed with some painkillers and a glass of hot milk. Presumably the girl was still asleep, for there was no sign of her in the kitchen.

Piers followed Bea into the kitchen, also yawning. He'd had to resume his evening dress, and hadn't bothered to shave or brush his hair. He didn't even say Good morning, but stumbled on to a stool at the table while she made a cafetière of coffee, strong and black. She thought of offering to lend him some of Hamilton's clothes, but didn't bother, for they'd never have fitted him.

She rather thought the phone had been ringing on and off while she'd been on her way downstairs, but presumably somebody – Oliver? – had attended to it. Nobody in their senses could expect her to attend to business this morning. Anyway, it was Sunday, wasn't it? Her day off.

She found a tin of frozen croissants in the freezer and stumbled around, preparing them for the oven. Piers looked as leaden-eyed as she felt.

Oliver came running up the stairs from the basement, all excitement. Good Lord, all that energy! How did he do it? ‘You'll never guess,' he said, his voice too loud for her ears, his gestures too wide. ‘It took some time but I've been working on her little book, and I've got into all the accounts she's still got running. There's not all that much in the other accounts, a couple of hundred here and there, but we'd be justified in taking that for charity too, wouldn't we?'

Piers yawned, pouring coffee into mugs. ‘Cut the volume, will you, youngster?'

‘Oh. Sorry. But it's so exciting, isn't it? I've been up for hours, you see, and it seemed like, well,
meant
that she forgot her book. Oh, I took a cuppa up to Maggie about an hour ago, but she was still asleep so I didn't disturb her. She's going to be all right, isn't she?'

Bea nodded. Speech was still beyond her. She put the croissants into the oven, and took the first sip from the mug of coffee that Piers pushed in her direction.

Nothing was going to dampen Oliver's enthusiasm. ‘What I think is that we ought to set aside a fair amount for bills we haven't got in yet. Leo's isn't in yet, is it? I suppose he'll surface some time today. He said he'd struck pay dirt yesterday. I wonder what he found out.'

‘Mm,' said Bea, not really caring, thinking that after they'd eaten, she might go back to bed for a while with a trashy novel and some Belgian chocolates.

Oliver looked at his watch. ‘Oh, and Ms McNeice just phoned and is coming round straight away.'

Bea groaned, and closed her eyes.

Piers said, ‘Couldn't you have put her off? Bea, the croissants are burning.'

Oliver looked uncertain. ‘She said it was urgent.' The front doorbell rang, and he went to answer it. Bea concentrated on putting plates, knives, butter and jam on the table, while Piers reached for the first hot croissant, burned his fingers, and blew on them. Serve him right if he did get his fingers burned.

Oliver ushered Ms McNeice into the room. The hotel manageress was as point-device as ever, flashing black earrings and all. She was smiling and very wide awake.

Piers reached out a long arm and unhooked a mug for her, gesturing that she should help herself to coffee, which she did. Bea shovelled croissants out to everyone.

‘Hope I'm not too early for you,' said Ms McNeice, meaning that she'd been up with the lark, and thought them very lazy for not having done the same. ‘Is that girl of yours all right?'

Bea moistened her mouth with coffee. ‘Still asleep.'

‘Good, good. Well, I came straight round because I thought you ought to know that all bets are off. The police have arrested Noel Briggs – or whatever his name is – for the murder of our barman.'

Bea and Piers suspended operations on their croissants, eyes and mouth wide.

‘Good news, isn't it?' smiled Ms McNeice. ‘It gives us a cast iron excuse to take that money and distribute it to the poor and needy. Yes, I wouldn't mind a croissant. Thank you. Much appreciated.'

Bea found her voice. ‘But how … what about …?'

‘I'd better start at the beginning, hadn't I? I stayed at the hotel overnight. I was worried about our receptionist, whom you may have noticed was not exactly herself. We have a room set aside for staff, so that's where she spent the night. She's perfectly all right this morning, planning an expensive holiday on her share of the proceeds. I sent her off home this morning in a taxi, just before the police arrived. During the night they'd been called to a disturbance at a block of flats not far away, and found an elderly man who said he'd been assaulted and robbed of his mobile phone by someone living in the flats. The police went upstairs to question the man and he went berserk, assaulted one of the policemen. So he was arrested for that as well.'

Wordless, Piers pushed a second croissant in Ms McNeice's direction.

Smiling, she accepted it. ‘Yes, you've guessed it! It was the man we know as Noel Briggs, though whether that's his real name or not, I don't know, and neither do the police. Anyway, when they searched his pockets, they found the victim's mobile phone and … and, wait for it! … the key to our honeymoon suite! That rang bells with the police, so they asked him why he had that key, and he started shouting that it wasn't his fault that it was so easy to kill people, some girls he'd picked up, and our barman, of course. I think our two young things have had a lucky escape, don't you?'

Ms McNeice cast down her eyes, trying to look meek. ‘The police wanted to know if I knew Noel and of course I said he was the son of the woman who'd been organizing a function at the hotel last night, that he'd been the photographer, in fact. I didn't say anything about fraud, or a notebook or millions going missing. Or diamonds.'

Bea blinked. ‘Won't the police find out?'

‘They don't know anything about a late-night meeting in my office. They don't know that we've managed to retrieve the stolen money, and it seems to me that they've no need to know. If they did know, they might impound the money as evidence and although we could put in our claim for it, it might be months and months before the matter came to trial, and the Crown Prosecution Service might keep it and the charities would suffer, wouldn't they?'

Bea exchanged glances with Piers. Was this ethical?

Ms McNeice chased crumbs around her plate. ‘The thing is, Noel is down for manslaughter at the very least, plus the assault on the policeman, plus the assault on his victim last night; whoever he was, poor man. Noel's going to go down for a few years, isn't he? So he really doesn't need to have any extra charges brought against him for the assaults on your Maggie and my little receptionist, which saves them a lot of hassle and court appearances.'

‘And it means we can recompense them for what they've suffered at his hands,' said Piers, thoughtfully. ‘What about Mrs Somers-Briggs and her partner?'

‘Nowhere to be found,' said Ms McNeice. ‘They didn't return to the flat last night and the police are looking for them as Noel's accomplices. We've got their cash, I'm putting out a warning on the website to other hoteliers to beware of them. On the whole I'm inclined to think that if they disappear, all well and good. I'm content with that, if you are.'