From now on.
It was the sound of a creaking door that distracted me from my thoughts. He walked in with the usual lust playing on his face. A beautifully wrapped, ribbon-adorned package in hand.
“Early Christmas present,” he said, giving it to me with a chuckle.
I unwrapped the box. A bra-and-knickers set from Agent Provocateur, it turned out, in size 36-26-37 (after all those hours spent exploring my curves, he did get my measurements right). Scarlet lace as fine as filigree. A garter belt with thigh-high black garters.
Of course. I should have known he was into garters.
He gives his wife roses. I saw him disappearing into his Newnham mansion a week ago with an impressive bunch. Half were pink. The rest were white. They were surely meant for his wife. But he gives his mistress garters.
Naughty, provocative garters.
Mark Henry Evans leads such a clichéd existence. No wonder his novels are brimming with clichés.
“Model it for me, darling.”
It struck me, at that point, that Mark Henry Evans also knows something about modeling, but in an altogether different way. His novels are full of lying villains. Even his heroes have duplicitous tendencies. He must model his characters after himself.
I obliged, of course. It worked. Within seconds, he was on top of me, thrusting away. Sweating like a pig. He flipped me over. It’s amazing how some men fuck like wild animals. Several minutes later, he pulled out. Satiated. Crashed straight onto the pillow next to me and began snoring. Postcoital bliss etched on his face.
I reached for his wallet, tossed on a side table. Nine crisp ￡20 notes, a stack of credit cards, and a strip of paper bearing the words “The birth date of the love of my life, and mine.”
I scribbled the words down on a notepad (you never know what might be useful someday) before studying his profile in the dim lamplight. I could have reached out to throttle him with my hands. Or twisted my stockings and bra straps into an unforgiving noose for his neck. Or slit his throat with a penknife.
Patience.
Patience, Sophia. Patience is the virtue of saints.
And sinners.
And so I got up, walked to the end of the room, and switched off the pin-size camera I’d hidden in the corner.
A detective should work out the truth of a person, even though the truth may be obscured by false facts.
—Textbook of Criminal Investigation, volume 4 (Oxford University Press, 1987)
Chapter Twelve
Hans
10 hours until the end of the day
She’s mad. Positively rabid. Also clueless about the way good detectives operate. But her diary’s strangely compelling. Unfathomable vitriol, when coupled with a healthy dose of insanity, has a way of making even a hardened inspector turn pages. I’m inclined to read on, even though her diary has taken up another twenty minutes of my precious time.
But I need some coffee first. My head is crying out for an injection of caffeine. I get up from my chair, grimacing at the pins and needles shooting up my legs. Just then, Toby comes rushing in with a pile of papers.
“Hans,” he says. “I’ve tracked down her Barclays records—”
“Let me guess. She’s flush.”
“She received monthly payments of ￡4,179.23 from a trust fund managed by Swiss Inheritance Services,” he says, running a finger down the uppermost sheet. “The transfers began on the first of April in 2013. The most recent was on the first of June, five days ago.”
“Who’s the payer?”
“I called the Swiss to find out. They were uncooperative. Said they take their clients’ privacy seriously.”
I groan. Damn those recalcitrant Swiss. I pull out my diary and type in “Swiss + contact” before squinting at the result.
“You need a Swiss to talk to the Swiss,” I say. “I’ve learned this the hard way. Call Heinrich Heinz, Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police. I’ve helped him before. He owes me one.”
“I’ll get on it.” Toby nods. “I also spoke to Edward Perry, Ayling’s landlord. Her monthly rent is ￡1,795. The cottage had been vacant for thirteen months before she phoned him in October of 2013 and said she wanted to move in the next day. A model tenant, he says. Gave him no problems whatsoever.”
I recite the two sums and the date to my Dictaphone before returning my attention to Toby.
“St. Augustine’s.”
“Ah, yes.” Toby nods again. “There’s indeed a private institution named St. Augustine’s Priory Hospital in the Outer Hebrides. It takes up five acres on the island of Hellisay. They were as unhelpful as the Swiss. Refused to say whether Ayling had been treated there.”
He riffles through the papers in his hands before reading from a sheet.
“Their website says: ‘We provide discreet inpatient medical care of the highest quality for women with psychiatric challenges. We have exclusive five-star residential facilities for up to twenty-five patients.’”
He hands me a photograph. I peer down; it’s a shot of an imposing concrete building framed by gnarled bushes and stunted trees. The landscape that surrounds it has a desolate, windswept air. A forbidding gray ocean shades the horizon, its surface shot through with white crests.
“Money buys secrecy,” I say with a sigh. “Keep your nose on it.”
As soon as I step outside for coffee, I’m waylaid by Fiona Allerton of the computing services department. Today’s outfit, I notice, features preppy spectacles with thick rims and skintight leopard-print trousers.
“Peter’s managed to hack into Ayling’s memory stick,” she says, face taking on an agitated fluster (as it did yesterday morning when we ran into each other at the coffee vending machine). Though the contents of Sophia’s memory stick might also have something to do with the look on her face.
“Took him more than twenty minutes to crack her password,” she continues. “She used a really complicated sequence of letters and numbers, it seems. But he got there in the end.”
“What’s on it?”
“Maybe you should come down and take a look.”
While coffee is tempting, the prospect of following Fiona to her lair is twice as appealing. She leads me down two flights of stairs to the basement, her trousers creasing under her buttocks with every step. The ripe odor of sweaty socks and cheese-and-onion Monster Munch greets my nostrils as we walk into her office. Large screens are flashing everywhere under harsh fluorescent lights. Fiona’s two young assistants are hunched over a computer terminal in the corner of the room. Both are gaping at its luminous screen. One is shaking his head, his mouth an exaggerated circle. The other, a gawky youth with several days’ worth of stubble on his chin, has eyes mushrooming out of their sockets.
“Peter,” says Fiona. “Could you play a video for Hans, please? Let’s say the one dated the twenty-fourth of November, 2013. It’s one of the most illuminating.”
I think I know what’s coming.