NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer 5) (5 page)

She glanced up
as Riley entered, and pointed a lime-coloured fingernail towards a doorway to
an adjacent room. ‘Miss Gavin? David said you were coming. He’s in there. Tea
or coffee?’ Her tone and smile were relaxed and unfazed, and Riley had the
impression that even if this young woman’s day got any harder, she would
probably look no different to the way she did right now.

‘I’d love a
coffee,’ she said gratefully. Donald’s idea of coffee was weak and warm, and
she needed a stiff belt of caffeine to get her brain in gear. ‘Sweet and
strong, please.’ Her head was already tight with tension, and she’d most likely
have the mother and father of all headaches by mid-morning. But getting through
the next few hours wasn’t going to be accomplished on wishful thinking and a
couple of cold Smoothies.

‘No probs,’
said Emerald lightly.

Riley stepped
through the open doorway into David Johnson’s office. The carpet was worn to a
thread and stained, but the computers and monitors in the office were
state-of-the-art and humming with activity.

Elsewhere, the
place had the appearance of a glory hole, with shelves weighed down by papers,
box files and reference books, and the untidy disorder of a serial slob
oblivious to the apparent chaos around him. Riley was willing to bet the man
could lay a finger on whatever he needed at the drop of a hat.

Johnson was a
thin, balding man with a harried air and frameless spectacles cantered to one
side as if they’d been put on in a hurry and never adjusted. His tie looked new
but was already showing signs of strain, and his dark shirt had the rumpled
bachelor’s look of just-in-time ironing.

‘I’m not sure
what I can tell you,’ he said distractedly without introduction. He waved Riley
to a chair by his desk. ‘Donald told me what you’d seen… a horrible business –
I can’t believe it.’ He shook his head from side to side, as if the movement
might dislodge the distasteful intrusion of death and danger that had been
placed there by the news of Helen Bellamy’s murder.

Riley wasn’t
sure what to say. The only deaths to enter this man’s world on a regular basis
were probably those of companies dying through mismanagement, or senior
executives expiring over one too many corporate lunches.

‘We wondered,’
she began, then remembered that Pell would be annoyed if she went round talking
about Helen’s death before the details were released by the police. ‘We weren’t
supposed to tell anyone about this. Can you keep it under your hat for now?’

He nodded
warily. ‘Of course.’

‘What had Helen
been working on recently?’

Johnson looked
startled, his eyes jumping behind his spectacles. ‘What – you think someone she
interviewed might have-?’ He stopped as if he found the idea too hideous to
contemplate. ‘Christ, I don’t know. I mean, she did a couple of assignments for
me, but they were all above-board. That was a few weeks back.’

‘Were they
companies or individuals?’

‘Umm… a couple
of companies, actually.’ He paused as Emerald entered with two mugs of coffee
and retreated again, dropping a handful of opened and sorted post on his desk
as she went, some with yellow stickers attached for urgent attention. ‘One was
the London branch of a US financial services company under investigation by the
Securities Exchange Commission in New York – but that was fairly unexciting
stuff. There were no threats or anything because the US directors coughed up to
minor fraud in exchange for a deal. Their case probably wasn’t helped much by
Helen’s digging, but it was hardly the sort of thing that would have led to
murder. They weren’t exactly Mafia figures.’

‘And the other
one?’

Johnson closed
his eyes in concentration and scratched his head, dislodging a flake or two of
dried scalp. ‘Similar type of thing, if I recall. That one was across the
channel - Brussels this time. Something to do with a scam on EU funding. Helen
did her usual thing, digging into the background until she found someone
willing to talk.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘There’s always someone willing to
talk.’

‘Sounds like
she was good at her job.’

Johnson nodded,
his face relaxing. ‘She was. I wish I’d been able to push more stuff her way,
but we don’t often get to cover hard news. Our core business usually circulates
around general commercial stuff: corporate developments, mergers and
acquisitions, that sort of thing. It’s all pretty low on excitement, really, in
comparison. But Helen, she was like a terrier, in spite of her looks.’ He
looked mildly abashed. ‘Sorry – don’t mean to be sexist or anything, but you
know what she looked like. She was successful because the people she went after
never saw her coming.’

Riley nodded. She
knew what he meant: Helen Bellamy, a wolf in elegant sheep’s clothing. ‘So she
did all right, then?’

‘I suppose. She
certainly seemed to be in regular work. She probably had the same problems
everyone else does – taking on stories that never paid in proportion to the
time and effort put in. But she seemed to manage.’

‘And no
problems related to any of her past assignments, as far as you know?’

‘Spit-backs
from previous jobs?’ Johnson shook his head. ‘None that she mentioned. As for
what we gave her, like I said, it wasn’t exactly hard-core embezzlement or
multinational fraud, where people disappear under a motorway piling.’ He paused
and looked warily at Riley.

‘What?’

‘Well, to be
honest, I got the impression the last time we spoke that she was waiting to
land something a bit more heavyweight. She was a bit distracted, which wasn’t
like her. I thought she was a bit frustrated with the run-of-the-mill  and
wanted something more. It was odd, really, because her work was absolutely
thorough and on the nail. Totally professional. In fact, she got a lot of
praise for it. I reckon she was in line for some major assignments eventually,
if only… ’ He shrugged and looked saddened. ‘Sorry.’

‘When did you
last speak to her?’

‘A couple of
weeks ago. I needed to check some detail about a story she’d done.’

‘You don’t know
what this potential job was, though?’

‘No. She never
said. I think it was still hanging at the time. It was more a feeling I had,
that’s all.’

There was
something in Johnson’s face; something he wasn’t saying.

‘What was your
impression?’

Eventually, he
sighed. ‘She once said she wanted to do the kind of work that you do.’

Riley felt a
stab of surprise. ‘Me? She said that?’

Johnson nodded
with a weak smile, as if he’d betrayed a confidence. ‘She said she’d met you
and admired your work. I think she felt she could have been doing better for
herself.’

 ‘She once
asked me if I knew anything about oligarchs.’ The voice floated through from
the outer office, inserting itself between them. Riley and Johnson turned to
stare at Emerald, who was busy filing a nail, her head bent in concentration.

‘Oligarchs?’
Riley glanced at Johnson, wondering if the girl was in the habit of joining in
on conversations with visitors. He shrugged, evidently used to it.

‘Yeah. Rich
Russians. Billionares, trillionaires, whatever they are. Like the bloke who
bought Chelsea. She asked if we’d ever covered any of them in the mags. I said
no.’

‘Are you sure?’
Riley couldn’t think why, but she felt it might be important. It was quite a shift,
from mundane business matters to Russians with bottomless bank accounts.

Johnson shifted
in his chair. ‘Em’s right. It’s not something we’ve ever done.’ He frowned,
focussing on the possibilities. ‘I’m not sure why, exactly – they certainly
have their fingers in enough pies. And with what’s brewing up under Putin at
the moment, and his growing antagonism towards the west, maybe a short series
would have been good.’ He realised what he was saying and looked guilty.’
Sorry. Bad timing.’

Riley let the thought
go. She didn’t need the conversation to drift off into the realms of publishing
fantasy. ‘Do you know if Helen had any family?’

Johnson shook
his head. ‘No. Well, I don’t know – if she did, she didn’t talk about them. She
came in when she had to, did what was needed and that was it. Like I said,
professional.’

‘What about
that last cheque?’ It was Emerald again. 

‘What about
it?’ Johnson asked.

‘She rang and
asked for it to go to a different address. Somewhere down in Hampshire. I’ve
got a note here somewhere.’ She dropped the emery board and attacked her
keyboard with a blur of fingers.

Johnson looked
at Riley and flushed. ‘Sorry… I didn’t know anything about this.’

‘Here it is.’
There was a buzz of a printer and the girl came through with a sheet of paper.
It was a simple payment slip for syndication fees, payable to Helen Bellamy.
The address was:
Mrs C. Demelzer, Long Cottage, Cotton Hill, Nr Basingstoke,
Hants
.

‘She rang last
week,’ Emerald continued, ‘and asked me to hold any outstanding payments. She
said if she didn’t come in to collect them by Friday, to make a cheque out to
the woman at this address. I sent it off yesterday. You approved it.’ She
stared at Johnson as if daring him to argue.

He blinked
back. ‘Really?’

Emerald smiled
conspiratorially at Riley, eyes twinkling behind her green specs. ‘Well, not
really, but you would have in the end. I mean, why should we worry where the
money goes – it’s her tax bill, isn’t it? And she was always really sweet to
me. She said I had style.’ She gave David Johnson an arch look and turned away.

Riley bit her
lip to stop herself smiling. She wanted to jump up and hug the girl. She held
up the piece of paper. ‘Was this normal? To have payments made out to someone
else?’

‘Not really.’
Johnson seemed mildly perturbed by the news, and that someone outside the
company was now privy to it. ‘But we have a whole list of freelance
contributors, so one-off payments are fairly common. If she’d asked it as a
favour, I suppose Em’s right - I’d have approved it.’ He nodded at the piece of
paper. ‘Maybe she owed this person money.’

‘Maybe. Can I
take this? It might be important.’

‘Help
yourself.’ Johnson prodded at his glasses and stood up, his eyes straying
towards his monitor. ‘Anything to help. I mean, Em’s right… Helen was a really
sweet woman. Such a waste.’

Back out on the
street, Riley took a deep breath of air. Somewhere along the line, a young
woman with a background in business reporting and a growing reputation had
expressed a desire to do something else: the kind of work on which Riley
herself had built a career. But was that all she had done - simply longed for a
change? A shift away from what might have become mundane and ‘safe’? Or had she
gone further than that, stepping out of her comfort zone into the world Riley
knew, and in doing so, looked at something – or someone - just a little too
closely for comfort?

********

Palmer parked his
car a short walk away from Riley’s flat off Holland Park Avenue, and climbed
out, glad of the opportunity to stretch his legs. He liked this part of west
London; it was just on the edge of busy, without being too frantic to enjoy the
ever-changing atmosphere and buzz of an inner-city suburb.

He dialled
Riley’s number as he walked. She picked up on the second ring and told him to
come on up, the kettle was on.

He slid the
phone back in his pocket and yawned. Everything was catching up on him; too
many late nights and greasy pit stops, too little sleep, too long spent peering
through a hazy windscreen. And now this.

He hadn’t
accomplished a lot since hearing the news about Helen. Sitting in his office,
remote from the specifics of how she had died, had merely brought on a rising
sense of frustration. Worst of all was the increasing realisation that, in
spite of their closeness for a while, he hadn’t really known Helen very well.
The idea filled him with sadness and regret.

He wasn’t
looking forward to the next few minutes. Given a choice, he’d have preferred to
shut himself off from everyone else and deal with the news of Helen’s death in
his own way. It was unreasonable and even disloyal, he knew that, because Riley
was probably his closest friend and the one person he could turn to at a time
of crisis. But years of operating in solitude had made him accustomed to not relying
much on anyone else.

Riley was
waiting for him on the first floor landing. She looked worried and drawn, and
he guessed she hadn’t slept well, either. He nodded matter-of-factly and
followed her inside. When she hesitated before going into the kitchen, and
appeared as if she was about to throw her arms around him, he held up a hand.

‘I’m fine.
Really,’ he said brusquely, and instantly regretted it. He knew she must be
feeling like hell, for him if not for herself. He reached out for her. ‘Sorry.
Didn’t mean it. This is good. But don’t tell anyone.’

They hugged
each other tight for a few seconds, before Riley patted him on the back and
slipped into the kitchen, where she clattered around making coffee. He couldn’t
see her face but he could read the body language. He left her to it, relieved
he hadn’t stuck to the stiff upper lip. She might not have known Helen very
well, but she clearly wasn’t unaffected by what had happened.

A large bruiser
of a tabby cat entered from the bedroom and walked across to greet him. It
rubbed against his legs just long enough to make contact, then turned away and
sat down to clean itself. Palmer smiled. The cat was a feline self-set, having
adopted Riley on a whim, but alternating between her and a granite-featured old
Pole named Grobowski, downstairs. While Riley made do with calling the animal
Cat and stocking standard feline food, Mr Grobowski shouted a lot in
heavily-accented English and called it Lipinski, feeding it heavy portions of
Polish cooking which he put together in his kitchen for compatriots at the
local community centre.