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  She nodded to herself. Yeah, too right. She had no idea what she was getting into or who Alan Murray really was. He could be anyone. What if the whole blind man thing was not something she had just blundered into, but had actually been set up with her in mind? What if that first meeting with Alan on the beach had not been an accident, but part of a carefully organised plan – a plan conceived by the same people who had bombed The Philanderer’s Club and who had now managed to trace her? The very idea that the handsome, sexy man she had slept with could be part of something like that seemed preposterous, but how could she be sure he wasn’t?

  Somehow, though, she needed to uncover the truth, regardless of the potential risks involved. It was in her nature to get to the bottom of things. It was a kind of compulsion. She had to know one way or the other and anyway, she was reassured by the fact that if Alan had meant her actual harm, he’d had plenty of opportunity to do the business in the last few days and hadn’t, so it was unlikely that she would be more at risk now. Logic silencing the warning voice in her head, she opened the front door.

  Rain lashed the car’s windows as she started the engine of the big Mercedes and pulled out into the lane, heading for the main road. Way out to sea a brilliant white flash suddenly lit up an otherwise smudged grey horizon, heralding an ominous roll of thunder which seemed to go on and on. With a sharp stab of apprehension, she wondered whether this was actually some sort of bad omen.

  CHAPTER 17

  Detective Inspector O’Donnell was angrier than she had been for a long time and pulling up outside The Blue Ketch Inn, her eyes were blazing as she pushed past the uniformed policewoman guarding the front door from the shelter of the wooden porch and stormed into the bar, her anorak glistening and her hair plastered over her forehead from the downpour. Mick Benchley winced when he saw her, knowing full well that he couldn’t have been more in the wrong place at the wrong time than he was at that precise moment.

  ‘With respect, sir,’ the DI challenged after sight of his police warrant card, ‘what the devil are you doing here on my patch? Met taking over the Devon and Cornwall force area now too, are they?’

  ‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘The fact is, I am the SIO in a London bombing investigation

  and—’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘The Philanderer’s Night Club?’

  He raised his eyebrows, his surprise evident. ‘And I came down here to see a key witness living on your manor—’

  ‘Lynn Giles?’ she finished for him. Living here under the assumed name, Mary Tresco?’

  ‘You are on the ball.’

  ‘I should be. Another of your witnesses – a certain Freddie Baxter – fell off a cliff near here a few nights ago.’

  ‘I know – but are you sure he just fell?’

  She smiled grimly. ‘We thought so originally, but from information we’ve just received it seems more likely he was pushed, so it does.’

  Benchley grimaced. ‘In which case, it appears that you now have two murders on your hands.’

  O’Donnell took a deep breath, forcing herself back in control. ‘You’d better show me,’ she said tightly and followed him up the stairs.

  Another uniformed policeman stood outside the bedroom containing the corpse, but he stepped aside to allow them to peer through the doorway.

  ‘SOCO are on their way, Ma’am,’ the policeman said. ‘An hour, tops.’

  O’Donnell nodded, grimly surveying the room and the grisly cadaver on the bed. It looked even worse in a sudden flash of lightning which lit up the bedroom from end to end.

  ‘Vernon Wiles,’ she commented to no one in particular.

  Benchley gave her a keen glance. ‘It’s apparently his room. But I’ve never met the man myself, so I couldn’t say for certain. You know him?’

  She nodded. ‘I should do. He came down here with Baxter and I interviewed him about his friend’s death.’ She shuddered. ‘Wee man seemed scared to death and it looks like he had good reason to be.’

  Benchley pointed at a pillow lying to one side of the body. The blackened hole in the centre told its own story and some of its white feather innards were now stuck to the bloody head of the corpse like a gruesome tiara.

  ‘Looks like his killer used the pillow to deaden the sound of the shot,’ he said.

  O’Donnell nodded. ‘So, no silencer fitted then?’

  ‘Unlikely if the pillow was necessary.’

  ‘But surely someone would have heard something, even so?’

  ‘Probably not. I bet a dive like this gets pretty lively at times and I happened to notice a poster over the bar when I walked in, advertising a nightly local band. This is an old building too, with thick walls and a heavy floor and, as I’ve already said, the pillow would have muffled the sound of the shot anyway – if he was actually murdered last night, that is.’

  She frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  He nodded towards the door. ‘I had a look at the abandoned nosh outside on the tray. It’s stew and badly congealed. Looks like it’s been there forever. And Smiler behind the bar downstairs says the last time he remembers anything being taken up was lunchtime yesterday.’

  ‘But didn’t anyone here check why Wiles hadn’t ordered anything else? And what about collecting the dishes and room cleaning?’

  ‘This isn’t The Ritz. I doubt whether they worry about anything until the guest leaves – if even then. I expect a lot of their guests don’t eat at the pub anyway, but go out for meals. Can’t say as I would blame them either, looking at that cow pat outside the door masquerading as stew.’

  ‘Well, he was alive when I saw him the day before yesterday. So the bottom line is that he could have been shot any time after that?’

  ‘Feasible, and the corpse looks less than fresh. You don’t need to be a pathologist to see that the wound is quite a few hours old.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘And the motive, what would that be, Sherlock?’ she said cheekily.

  Benchley gave a faint smile. ‘Elementary, my dear Watson. He was with Baxter the night he died. Maybe the killer thought there was a chance he had seen something and decided to make sure he kept schtum.’

  She grunted and turned towards the uniformed constable. ‘Anyone here see anything?’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘Not to my knowledge, Ma’am,’ he said. ‘That creepy barman was the only one about when we got here anyway.’

  O’Donnell glanced quickly along the corridor. ‘Anyone staying in the other rooms?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘Seems Wiles was the only one after Baxter died – apart from a young black woman who stayed just Tuesday night, then checked out.’

  ‘Left well before I arrived,’ Benchley commented. ‘Smiler in the bar says she gave her name as Denise Cross, but her real name’s Felicity Dubois and she was one of the late Freddie Baxter’s models.’

  ‘So it looks like she might have some explaining to do?’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘But what would be her motive for murder?’

  Benchley shrugged. ‘We think Baxter had a hold over her – indecent pics – and it’s feasible that she planted the bomb at The Philanderer’s Club to get him off her back. When that failed, it’s possible she followed him the day he came down here to see Lynn Giles and did the business on him then. We know she had a few days off before Baxter’s death, so she had the opportunity. Maybe Wiles was in on Baxter’s killing or saw Dubois carry it out, so she stiffed him to shut him up for good.’

  ‘It all seems to fit. We have a witness who saw a woman push Baxter off the clifftop, though it was too dark for him to describe the assailant in detail.’

  ‘Jigsaw pieces certainly seem to be falling into place.’

  ‘Maybe, but I have to wonder why this Dubois woman would go to all the trouble of trying to disguise Baxter’s death as an accident and then commit an obvious murder by shooting Wiles.’

  Benchley grunted. ‘Expediency, I would think? She needed to
act fast to stop Wiles speaking out of turn. Could be he got nervous and phoned her, which would have forced her hand. From the evidence we have to date, our killer is not only persistent, but likes to clear up any loose ends afterwards. We’ve already found the body of the accomplice bomb-maker, shot in the head like Wiles here, which means the MO is virtually the same.’

  ‘So all we have to do is find Dubois? What do we know about her?’

  ‘Only that she’s black and drives a maroon BMW 7 series.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. Index number?’

  Benchley pulled his notebook from his pocket and flicked it open at the relevant page to enable her to jot the number down on the back of an envelope, which she handed to the constable standing beside her. ‘We’ll get that circulated straight away,’ she said as the constable reached for his personal radio. ‘But she’s probably already on her way back to the Smoke.’

  Benchley seemed not have heard her, but had jerked his mobile out of his pocket and was stabbing the buttons with a fierce, almost desperate energy. The number he dialled rang and rang, then responded with a BT answerphone.

  ‘Sod it!’ he snapped. ‘Still nothing.’

  ‘Still nothing, what?’

  He stared at her absently for a moment, obviously thinking. Then he seemed to surface from his thoughts with a jolt. ‘Lynn Giles,’ he answered finally. ‘Called on her earlier and she was out. Seems she’s not back even now. I don’t like the sound of it.’

  You think Dubois will go after her?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Then we’d better check her place out,’ O’Donnell replied. ‘Like now.’

  ****

  As Benchley and O’Donnell left The Blue Ketch Inn, Felicity Dubois turned into the lane leading down to The Beach House. Then a hundred yards or so from the bungalow, on the approach to a sharp bend, she pulled up and reversed back through an adjacent gateway to park just out of sight in the short, stubby grass behind a dry-stone wall, out of the buffeting wind. Switching off, she sat there smoking a cigarette, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and the occasional crack of thunder as she considered her next move.

  By rights, she knew she should have headed straight back to London after what had happened at The Blue Ketch Inn. That would have been the most sensible thing to have done. In fairness it had been her first inclination too, and checking out of the inn in the previous day after visiting Lynn Giles she had high-tailed it towards the motorway, spending the next night at a motel on route to give her time to think things out. But her determination to finish her business with her former catwalk rival had finally won the day. After all, that was why she had driven all the way down to Cornwall in the first place, wasn’t it? And that business would have been concluded but for the unexpected interruption by the swede kid delivering those bloody flowers.

  She was totally indifferent to the grisly end of Vernon Wiles. The little shit had got what was coming to him and she wasn’t going to allow that to divert her from her main purpose. Okay, so she was taking a big risk coming back to the area after what had happened. Although she had registered under a false name at The Blue Ketch Inn, being black made her easily identifiable if the police chose to extend their inquiries to the New Light agency, and in addition the snake-eyed barman might remember her saying that she was a friend of Lynn Giles. But so what? Why shouldn’t she travel to Cornwall to see an old friend? And though technically naughty registering under a false name at the inn, as a well-known fashion model it was understandable that she would want to hide her identity in case of intrusive press interest.

  As for Wiles himself, there was no way the swede plods would be able to connect him to her. He was Freddie Baxter’s pal, after all, and nothing to do with New Light. Coupled with which, no one had seen her popping into his room that last afternoon anyway. So, once she had dealt with Lynn Giles, she could simply disappear back to London, with no one being any the wiser and everything well and truly sorted. She could hardly wait to see the ex-model’s face in that final moment of truth, though. It would represent the ultimate satisfaction. The supreme triumph. And she was looking forward to savouring every last second of it.

  Finishing her cigarette, she stubbed it out in the ashtray, grabbed a torch and reached for the handle of the door. Time to go. She accepted that she was about to get very wet, but had already decided that she was going to walk rather than drive the short distance to the bungalow to make her reappearance even more of a surprise. With the door half-open, however, she stopped short at the sound of a powerful engine starting up somewhere close by. Closing the door again and peering through the corner of the windscreen, she saw a flash of headlights and the rear lights of Lynn’s Mercedes disappearing towards the main road.

  ‘Now where the hell are you going?’ she murmured to herself, and waiting a few seconds to give the Mercedes time to put some distance between them, she started the BMW and pulled out into the lane after her.

  There was no sign of the big silver saloon when she got to the junction with the main road, but then she spotted it through the squalling rain. It had turned left towards Lizard Point and it was not hanging about either, despite the foul weather. Muttering an oath, she hit the accelerator hard and exited the lane with a screech of tyres – straight into the path of the police Traffic car as it rounded a sharp bend from the opposite direction with headlights blazing.

  ****

  Lynn Giles pulled up some 20-30 yards from The Old Customs House, switching her headlights off, but leaving her engine running. Then she sat for a moment, studying the place from under hooded lids while she tapped out a tattoo on the steering wheel with both hands.

  Well, now she was here what was she going to say to Alan? How was she going to justify dropping in on him like this? “Hi Alan, I’m feeling a bit fruity, so could you oblige?” She permitted herself a thin smile. Hardly. It was true that she had made impromptu visits to his place before, but each time she’d had a valid reason – the questioning by DI O’Donnell on the clifftop, for example, which had genuinely stressed her out. But this time nothing had happened for her to use as an excuse. Furthermore, much as she still fancied Alan, would she be able to give a convincing performance in bed, if it came to that, with all the newly arisen doubts about him still crowding her mind?

  In the end, the decision was taken out of her hands as a figure suddenly appeared at the driver’s window and tapped on the glass. Alan was wreathed in oilskins, from the sou’wester pulled down low over his face to the waterproofs tucked into his gumboots, and he gleamed black with the rain, which burst over him like the continuous fall of water erupting from the head of a fountain. For a second she jumped, hardly recognising him in his sinister-looking outfit, but then she saw Archie standing just behind him on a lead, looking forlorn and dejected.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Alan shouted. For a second she thought she had caught him out. So how did he know she was there? But then she realised her engine was still running. Damn it!

  Pressing the button to lower the window, she felt the rain lash her face. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Lynn.’

  At first he seemed taken aback, but then he recovered and shook his head in apparent disbelief. ‘What on earth are you doing out here in this weather?’

  ‘What about you?’ she shouted back.

  He gave a hard laugh. ‘Archie needed a walk,’ he said. ‘Got caught in this lot on the headland.’

  He waved a hand towards the house. ‘See you inside, if you feel like braving the rain.’

  He didn’t wait for a reply either, allowing Archie to lead him the few yards through the open gate to the front door. Grimacing, she eased the car forward to stop right beside the gate. Then switching off, she turned up the collar of her coat, and climbing out into the rain, kicked the door shut behind her and ran for the house.

  Alan’s boots and sou’wester were already lying on the floor and he was almost out of his waterproofs by the time she joined him in the hallway, slamming the
front door against the rain-laden gusts as Archie stood and shook himself, sending water everywhere.

  Alan took her coat and hung it up on a hook, then grinned. ‘A nice stiff drink, I think,’ he said, fumbling for a towel lying by the living room door, which he’d obviously dumped there before going out. ‘You know where it is. Pour me a scotch, will you? I’ll just see to Archie. He doesn’t like storms, so I’ll have to shut him in the kitchen with the blinds drawn to keep him quiet, I’m afraid.’

  The house trembled under the onslaught of the wind and the dog whimpered and shrank away from him as he felt his way along the wall to the open doorway. Lynn could hear him coaxing the animal inside as she walked through into the living room, switched on the lights and flipped open the lid of the cocktail cabinet.

  She was halfway through a gin and tonic by the time Alan joined her, wearing the ubiquitous dark glasses. She watched him carefully over the rim of her glass as he felt his way to the cabinet and fumbled for the glass of whisky she had poured for him. She frowned, wondering how he knew where she had left it – it could easily have been on the coffee table or a chair arm instead – unless he was either sighted or pretty damned good at assumptions.

  ‘And to what do I owe this pleasure?’ he said cheerfully, this time talking to the wrong wall.

  She gave another frown, feeling confused. So was he genuinely blind or had he simply mastered the part he was playing?

  ‘I … I needed some company,’ she said lamely, thinking that this was the question she had dreaded and which she was totally unprepared for. ‘Just thought I’d call in to see you.’

  He turned in the direction of her voice, then felt his way round the edge of the settee to where she was sitting and dropped down beside her. ‘Glad you did,’ he said, then added abruptly, ‘Were you over earlier?’

  She froze. That was one question she hadn’t expected and it had completely thrown her. ‘Ear … earlier?’ she prevaricated. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’