Rotten Apples Read online

  ‘They don’t call it that,’ said Willow, ‘but yes, he was.’

  The bedroom door opened before either man could ask anything else, and Mrs Rusham looked in.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked. ‘You know the doctors did say that you were not to overtax yourself.’

  Willow was amused by the evidence of Mrs Rusham’s imagination and caught a gleam of laughter in her black eyes.

  ‘I’m fine. But could I have some more of that juice? My throat’s wearing out.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll fetch some. And it’s time for your next pills. Here they are.’ Mrs Rusham bustled over to the side of the bed and rearranged the pillows, playing the part of a nurse for once, instead of her usual withdrawn housekeeper role.

  Neither police officer looked at all embarrassed by her activities, which was probably what she had hoped to achieve. They merely waited until she had gone, when John Blackled said casually: ‘To go back to the question I first started with: can you think of anyone who might have wanted both you and Tom harmed? It seems a bit much of a coincidence that the pair of you should have been involved in murderous attacks within forty-eight hours.’

  Willow felt impatient as well as tired and her voice was sharp as she said, ‘I’ve already explained why I couldn’t have been the target of a fire set to go off at that time of night’

  ‘There might not actually have been a clock,’ said Harness, drawling in an unconvincing attempt to sound casual. ‘It’s possible, but by no means certain yet. They’ll probably know for sure later, but at the moment they’re saying that it could also have been a radio signal or a flashing light.’

  ‘What? Like a remote-control bomb?’

  ‘That sort of thing. And if so, it could have been set off at any moment they chose. I don’t want to worry you unnecessarily, but we need to investigate every possibility.’ He watched Willow close her eyes again and added gently: ‘You know the way we work. We have to find out whether they could have been watching you and followed you to the tax office. It is possible that it was you they wanted and Scoffer who just got caught in the cross-fire, rather than vice versa.’

  Willow suddenly remembered the predatory tramp who had accosted her under Hyde Park Corner, and her old sensation of being protected from chaos by only a thin membrane of safety returned.

  ‘What makes you think I’ve been watched?’ No longer so certain that she could look after herself, she tried to hide her fears, but she did not think that she had succeeded.

  ‘We don’t think it’s very likely,’ said Harness soothingly, ‘but we have to make sure. If you notice anything unusual, let me know at once. We’ll keep you informed, of course.’ He folded up his notebook.

  ‘Oh hell!’ Willow said loudly and then put a bandaged hand to her neck, as though that could soothe the pain inside her throat.

  ‘What have you remembered?’ asked Harness sharply.

  ‘I can’t think why I’ve been such a fool,’ said Willow, afraid that her brain would never work properly again. ‘Jack, you said it could have been someone who had a grudge against me and Tom.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There are in fact four people who might think that we had injured them. As far as I know they’re all still in prison, but…’

  She tried to organize her thoughts so that she could explain succinctly that over the past few years she had been involved in the unmasking of four murderers.

  ‘You needn’t look like that,’ she said in exasperation as Blackled cast up his eyes. ‘I didn’t set out to be a private investigator or anything. It just happened. But Tom was always around as well.’

  Harness took out his notebook again and clicked the point of his Biro down on to the paper. Willow gave him the names of the people she had helped to put away.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Worth,’ said Harness. ‘That’s very helpful indeed.’

  She thought that he looked almost grim in spite of his delicate features.

  ‘You will tell me if any of them are out, won’t you?’ Willow considered the various stories she had read of prisoners escaping while in transit from one gaol to another. ‘Or even in an open prison.’

  ‘Don’t you worry. If they were convicted of murder they will have got life, and none of them will be out yet. But I’ll get someone to check it right away. Well, I think that about wraps it up then, don’t you, sir? We’ll leave Mrs Worth to her ministering angel for the moment.’

  Mrs Rusham, who had just returned with a jug of fruit juice, a clean glass and another bendy straw, looked at him as though he were a cockroach. She put the glass down on the table at Willow’s side, poured in the juice and stuck in the straw, bending it into a right angle so that Willow could suck up the juice without having to move or lift the glass.

  ‘Good of you to see us. I hope your hands heal soon, Mrs Worth.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Willow mechanically.

  If she had not been so physically weak, she thought she would have been able to control her terrors better. Making sure that her voice did not wobble, she said: ‘Jack, before you go?’

  ‘Yes?’ He looked down at his watch, demonstrating the urgency of the many demands on his time.

  ‘Have you got someone at the hospital to make sure Tom’s not attacked again?’

  ‘Naturally,’ he said, smiling down at her with approval. ‘Didn’t you see the officer there when you last visited? He saw you.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said abruptly and turned her face to the wall. She heard the two men whisper to each other and then leave the room.

  Once she was certain they had gone, she rolled her head back on the pillow, took the straw between her lips and sucked some of the fresh, sweet fruit juice into her mouth. As she swallowed, she felt a momentary easing of her throat and tried to think sensibly.

  The possibility that someone had been stalking both Tom and herself, and, having twice failed to kill, might try again, appalled her. She got out of bed and closed all the windows.

  In the resulting stuffiness, she went back to bed and picked up the first of the newspapers Mrs Rusham had provided, turning the pages until she came to the report of the fire. She found that if she held the paper really close to her eyes she could see the print without her spectacles.

  There was a picture of her apparently stuck to the wall and two columns of text about the fire, but, having read every word, she was no better informed. There was no report of any body, and Scoffer was not even mentioned, although Kate Moughette was named as the District Inspector in charge of the office.

  Willow searched the other papers, turning the pages with difficulty, learning from one that she was a ‘flame-haired tax heroine’, and from the Daily Mercury that she was ‘romance-writer wife of shot top cop’.

  Mrs Rusham reappeared with a heap of envelopes, saying, ‘Here’s the post. Would you like me to open them?’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ Willow let the paper fall into her lap. ‘That would really help.’

  Mrs Rusham slit each envelope neatly with a blunt knife she had brought with her in the pocket of her white lab coat and handed the letters still folded to Willow, who reached for her glasses. She glanced at each letter and, with much of her usual efficiency, divided them into piles to be dealt with later. Bills went into one, letters about her books into another, and personal notes in a third. The usual crop of junk mail she handed straight back to Mrs Rusham for immediate disposal.

  The last envelope was brown, about five inches by eight and stiffened. Mrs Rusham opened it with more difficulty than usual, having to pick a wide strip of Sellotape from the flap.

  ‘It seems to be a photograph,’ she said, handing it over. ‘Ah, here’s the enclosure.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Willow, taking the short note, which must have been written before the fire and before Serena had sent the flowers.

  Willow, This is probably the clearest photograph I’ve got of Fiona, even though it doesn’t give much idea of her character. Hope it’ll be of some h
elp.

  S. Fydgett

  PS I’m sorry I upset you by cross-examining you about your husband. My friends tell me that I treat everyone like an obstructive witness these days. It was good of you to be so patient with me. I hope that you get some better news of him soon.

  Touched by the post-script, Willow picked up the photograph and stared at it. There was an enormous difference between the two sisters. Fiona had been remarkably pretty, unless the studio portrait had been heavily retouched. Where Serena’s face looked solid, her sister’s was delicate, with a pointed chin and wide blue eyes. Her blonde hair was short, fringing her face in feathery curls. She looked fascinating and mischievous, and very much the younger of the two.

  The hints Serena had given that Fiona had had many lovers seemed credible. Reconstructing some of the other hints she had not even noticed at the time, Willow began to wonder how the two women had got on and whether Serena had grudged her sister those seductive looks and the lovers they had brought her. Willow had always despised people who thought that plain women were automatically jealous of prettier ones—or that it was looks alone that aroused love—but there had definitely been something ambivalent in the way Serena had talked about her sister.

  Never having had sisters of her own, Willow had nothing to go on but instinct and the novels she had read. Some of them certainly suggested that tremendous jealousy could coexist with genuine affection, but Willow could not think of anyone, either in life or fiction, who had gone so far as to kill her sister out of jealousy.

  The telephone rang before Willow could remember precisely what it was Serena had said that seemed ambivalent or even try to retrieve the reasons she had given for her certainty that Fiona had committed suicide. Mrs Rusham got up to answer it.

  ‘It’s Jane Cleverholme, from the Daily Mercury,’ she said a moment later, having covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with great care. ‘Shall I say you’re not available?’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ said Willow, holding out her bandaged right hand and trying to ignore her disappointment that it was not one of the nurses with good news of Tom. ‘I’ll talk to her. Thanks, Mrs Rusham.’

  ‘Willow? Is that really you? Are you all right? You sound amazing, considering.’

  ‘Jane, how nice of you to ring!’ Willow made an effort to sound glad. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. Much more to the point: how are you? ‘It must have been frightful.’

  ‘Yes, it was. Just that. Are you after more gory details for your paper?’

  ‘Not exactly. I’m features editor now, and I was just thinking that maybe you might like to do a piece for us when you’re better. You know, not precisely news; more on the lines of real-life adventures of an adventurous novelist.’

  Willow waited, saying nothing.

  Jane wheedled on: ‘And then there’s the romantic angle as well, isn’t there?’

  ‘What?’ Willow felt as though she had been saying little else than that one bald word for days. For an angry moment she wondered whether the police had been offering the Mercury hints about a relationship between herself and Len Scoffer. It was not completely unknown for police officers to hand tabloid newspapers juicy little bits of information from a crime scene.

  ‘You sound a bit hostile, Willow.’

  ‘A bit is understating it. I’m feeling pretty tried just at the moment, and…and battered. I’ll admit I owe you one, or several, for information in the past, but I’m hurt and worn out and bloody anxious, so come out with exactly what you’re proposing or bugger off and let me sleep.’

  Jane laughed. There was little amusement in the sound and it was tainted with self-consciousness. Willow longed for someone to talk to her straight for once.

  ‘I do admire you, you know,’ said Jane. ‘After what you’ve been through. No, it’s just that that spectacularly handsome climber—you know, Jonathan Fergusson-Miller—was the bloke who was guiding you down the wall last night. I thought it could make a great feature: romance, life-and-death danger, brief encounter sort of thing. We’d pay for a slap-up dinner, you know, for you to talk to him—with photographs.’

  ‘How on earth do you know it was him?’ asked Willow, momentarily distracted.

  ‘Coincidence, really. One of my colleagues was there. She’d been to meet someone not far away and was on her way to Pimlico tube. She saw and heard what happened, and then she got his name on the off-chance it might be interesting. When we discovered that the heroine was you, it seemed that we’d struck gold. He’s quite happy to contribute. He’s planning a new expedition for next year and is in the process of raising funds now.’

  ‘Cynic. I’ll think about it and let you know.’

  ‘But you won’t go to anyone else with it?’ Jane sounded worried.

  ‘No, I won’t do that,’ said Willow, glad to feel even the tiniest bit of power.

  ‘Thanks, Willow. You’re a brick. Oh, er…I’ve been wanting to ask, but wasn’t quite sure how to put it. How’s Tom?’

  ‘Holding his own. Goodbye, Jane.’

  Willow cut the connection, not wanting to hear Jane apologising for insensitivity or asking any more questions. Willow would have to accept or refuse the idea of the article within a few days; but even that might be enough to help her regain some of her defences. The thought of making an ass of herself dining with the mountaineer for the benefit of the Mercury’s photographers filled her with disgust, but, on the other hand, her publishers were always wanting her to accept every scrap of offered publicity.

  Willow was surprised at the way her mind divided itself into layers. At the base of them all was her anxiety for Tom; that was there all the time and it could rear up above everything else without any warning. But there were other layers, too: the fears that Harness and Black Jack had raised in her; anger at her own physical pain; curiosity about the fire; sympathy for Scoffer’s family; concern about exactly what the minister had expected her to discover; anxiety about Eve Greville’s reactions to the book she had just finished writing; gratitude to Mrs Rusham; and even mild amusement at Jane Cleverholme’s opportunism.

  As Willow thought about it all, the different layers seemed to melt into each other and suddenly give way to nothing, only to reappear an instant later and swoop away before she could grasp them. The painkillers she had taken pushed her into sleep before she understood what was happening.

  Chapter Nine

  After An Uncomfortable and anxiety-infested weekend, Willow woke at seven on Monday morning restless and agitated. She got up at once, knowing that she would sink into real depression if she had to lie in bed for any more days with nothing to do but worry about Tom, wonder who might have tried to kill her, and imagine what it would have felt like if she had not managed to climb out of the burning building.

  Anything would be better than that. Best of all would be to get back to work and establish exactly what had happened to Fiona Fydgett, whether someone else had been involved in her death, who had set fire to the tax office, and why. Once she knew all that, and whether there had been any connection between Fydgett’s death and the fire, she might be able to lay some of her worst nightmares to rest.

  Peering under the bandages, she saw that the stretched and wrinkled skin of her hands had blown up into large, fluid-filled blisters, which frightened her less, even though they looked more revolting. Her fingers still did not bend easily, and her palms were sore, but she had begun to believe that the hands might one day work properly again and she was becoming less reluctant to use them.

  She had learned to bathe without wetting them at all by dint of pouring a lot of detergent-based bathfoam in the water so that she did not need to use soap. That morning, for her first full day out of bed, she picked clothes with the simplest of fastenings, which her hands could manage. Her eyes were getting used to spectacles again and for most of the time she could see clearly enough.

  When she got out of the bath and looked at herself in the mirror, she grimaced at her puffy, reddened fa
ce. There was nothing she could do about that, since she could not bear the idea of smearing cosmetics on her skin, but she was determined to have something done to improve her lank and ragged hair.

  Her usual hairdressers opened for business at half-past eight, and she persuaded them to fit her in then without an appointment. She spent an hour answering tactful questions about Tom and about her own experiences in the fire as an apprentice washed her hair with as much gentleness as he could manage, and then the owner of the salon cut and styled it. Willow tried not to look in the mirrors until they had finished. She had to admit then that she did look a little better, and she felt as though she might be able to face Kate Moughette and her team.

  They had been temporarily relocated in an empty government building south of the river, but Willow wanted to take a detour to the old offices so that she could have a look at the damage the fire had done. She could not imagine what clues she might be able to pick up from merely looking at the building, but she had to try.

  A taxi was passing the door of the salon as she emerged and she asked the driver to take her to the Vauxhall Bridge Road. It was not until she had strapped herself into the seat belt with great difficulty that she noticed the driver watching her in his mirror.

  Part of his big face was hidden, but she could see from the reflection of his left eye that he was looking at her. When she moved sideways to get out of his line of sight, his head moved, too. He looked at the traffic every so often, but his gaze always came back to her.

  It was impossible not to remember Harness’s idea that someone might have been watching her. And it was equally impossible not to realise just how easy it would be to follow someone through the streets of London in a black taxi.

  Willow stared out of the window at the passing buildings, only occasionally glancing at the driver. Each time, she saw that he was still looking at her. She noticed with relief that there were handles on the inside of both doors so that at least she would be able to escape, and then tried to laugh at her fears.