Bloody Roses Read online

  ‘May I say that you are not quite as I had expected?’ Robert Biggleigh-Clart shook his elegant spectacles a little way down his splendidly straight nose and looked at Willow over the top of them. ‘And rather better informed.’

  ‘You may say whatever you want,’ she answered directly, ‘particularly when it’s as flattering as that. May I in turn put in a request?’

  Biggleigh-Clart nodded and pushed the spectacles back up over his brown eyes again.

  ‘There is a young man on Richard’s staff whom I once met and who would probably recognize me as Cressida Woodruffe. His name is James Montholme. Is there any possibility that you could get him out of the way for a few days?’

  The two bankers looked at one another.

  ‘He is well used to secrecy,’ said Stedington. ‘They all are.’

  ‘Chinese walls and all that,’ said Willow, wondering for the first time why imaginary barriers should be oriental. ‘Yes, I know, but I do think it’s important that as few people as possible know who I am.’

  ‘We could always send him over to New York on a diplomatic mission to Richard’s clients,’ suggested Biggleigh-Clart. ‘We ought to do something in any case, and he’d go like a shot. His last departmental report suggested that he’s slightly short of international experience.’

  ‘Is he … weighty enough, d’you think?’ Stedington’s brows touched over his nose as he frowned.

  ‘I think it ought to be all right. After all, Richard will be flying out himself pretty soon, unless the worst happens and …’ Biggleigh-Clart broke off, leaving the other two to finish the sentence off in their own minds. Neither had any difficulty.

  ‘Is Montholme still here?’

  Jeremy Stedington got out of his deep leather chair and pushed open the door to the secretary’s office.

  ‘You will be discreet, won’t you?’ said Biggleigh-Clart, taking advantage of his subordinate’s absence. ‘The whole staff, particularly in that department, is in a state of indescribable tension since the tragedy. I’d hate – even in my enthusiasm for proving Richard’s innocence – to cause an uproar.’

  Willow crossed one long leg over the other. ‘My enthusiasm for getting Richard out overrides everything else,’ she said carefully, ‘but I do recognize that yours may not. I won’t knowingly jeopardize your profitable business or worry your staff.’

  ‘Thank you. I can see why Richard has such respect for you,’ He bowed before her and she saw how easy it would be to succumb to his charming technique.

  ‘Montholme will come up to see you at half past six,’ said Stedington as he returned.

  ‘But,’ said Willow, putting out a restraining hand to stop the conversation running away before she had finished, ‘you must not rely on me to conceal anything I find if it would help Richard. Obviously it would suit you best if I could prove that Mrs Allfarthing was indeed murdered and that her killer had nothing to do with the bank. But that does seem unlikely.’

  Robert Biggleigh-Clart said nothing. From above and behind Willow’s head, Jeremy Stedington’s voice said:

  ‘That is fair, Robert. Whatever she finds out, it’ll be better than having Richard convicted unjustly.’

  The chief executive looked up towards his junior. There was no discernible expression on his face.

  ‘Provided that what she finds out is true,’ he said coolly after a significant pause.

  ‘It will be,’ said Willow with equal chilliness.

  ‘Very well. But if you do start to cause trouble I will stop you at once, without the slightest compunction. Any kind of trouble. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Willow saw the ruthlessness that she had always known must lie beneath the charm. ‘I don’t like it, but I certainly understand.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Stedington with such patent relief in his voice that it was clear to the others that he had felt like a nut held between the two arms of a pair of nutcrackers. ‘Then all we have to decide is Miss King’s access.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, turning the politeness into a question.

  ‘Most of our work is secret,’ said Robert Biggleigh-Clart, crossing his own legs and revealing three inches of navy-blue sock above his hand-made tasselled loafers, which were decorated with the kind of perforations usually seen on heavy brogues.

  Suddenly Willow could not suppress a smile. She remembered Tom Worth’s telling her that he had once worn a pair of similar shoes when visiting his father, who had looked at them in disgust and muttered about ‘poove’s galoshes’.

  ‘Miss King?’

  ‘My apologies, Mr Biggleigh-Clart. I had had a sudden thought. You were telling me that your work is secret. I’m fully aware of the exigencies of the Financial Services Act and the dangers of insider trading. I can safely promise you that I won’t reveal anything I learn of your proposed mergers and takeovers.’

  ‘Or use the information on your own account?’

  For a moment Willow looked puzzled but then she smiled.

  ‘You mean, gamble on the Stock Exchange on the basis of information I’d learned here? I can safely promise that too. My pension, my Peps and my investment trusts are all equity-based, but that’s as far as I’m prepared to go. The rest is merely earning decent interest in various accounts. I am not prepared to put the whole of my funds through an organization that decides their value on the basis of English cricketers’test scores.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The smooth Mr Biggleigh-Clart seemed as puzzled as Willow had done earlier.

  ‘Richard told me one evening a few years ago that the market had leaped up several points when one of our batsmen made a century. I am not prepared to have my money at the mercy of that kind of irrelevance.’

  ‘I see. Well, I shall have to rely on your discretion,’ said Mr Biggleigh-Clart, watching her as though she were a peculiarly dim-witted foreigner. ‘But I must lay down some restrictions. You will obviously have to question members of the Corporate Finance Department, but I cannot have you sitting in on any of their meetings with clients, for example.’

  ‘Oh, but I must,’ Willow’s protest was instant and heartfelt. ‘For one thing, if my cover is that I’m to report on your training needs after the scene Richard made in his meeting, then I shall have to see how your people work in meetings.’

  Jeremy Stedington handed his chief a list. ‘I asked Annabel for those, Robert. They might help your decision.’

  Biggleigh-Clart rose and took a Mont Blanc pen from the top drawer of his desk, crossing out some of the names on the list. When he had finished he screwed the top on the pen and put it away, reread the list and then handed it back to Jeremy.

  ‘She may sit in on any meetings to do with those clients: none of the others.’ He turned to Willow as she sat, confident and impassive, where he had left her. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I have to protect the confidentiality of certain deals.’

  He looked at the slender Piaget watch on his hairless wrist and then held out his right hand again. Willow got to her feet and shook it once more.

  ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘But I look forward to our meeting again, and to hearing of your progress. Thank you for coming.’

  Aware that she had no power to force him to answer questions then or at any other time, Willow accepted the dismissal. Jeremy Stedington took her back down in the lift. About halfway down, he said:

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand him.’

  Willow looked straight at the banker and saw in his eyes a worried affection that she had not expected.

  ‘He seemed perfectly fair,’ she said. ‘And I can quite understand his wanting to keep me well controlled.’

  Stedington laughed.

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant,’ he said as the lift doors were sucked open with a surge of compressed air. Putting his finger on the button that would keep them apart, he went on: ‘He looks utterly unfeeling and wholly selfish, doesn’t he? But he’s not. Did you know that he goes regularly
to two south London prisons to teach the illiterate prisoners to read?’

  ‘How very unexpected!’

  ‘I know. But I know just what a charming steamroller he can appear, and I’d hate you to misjudge him.’

  ‘You must like him a lot,’ said Willow, efficiently hiding her bounding curiosity.

  ‘I’ve got a lot of time for him. He and his wife have been remarkably decent to me just recently when I’ve … er … needed it. I owe him more than simply opening your eyes a bit.’

  ‘All right. Thank you, Jeremy,’ Willow’s mind filed the information of his strong allegiance. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. Is nine o’clock too late?’

  ‘I’d make it a bit later still. Give them a chance to get the letters distributed and the secretaries working. I’ll have a visitor’s pass waiting for you. We can’t give you the code for the Corporate Finance Department doors, but one of the receptionists will ring up when you arrive. Then just push the bell when you get to the fourth floor. Someone will always let you in. Good night.’

  They shook hands just as a voice called: ‘Hold the lift, Jeremy.’

  Willow looked round and saw a slight, fair-haired man carrying a briefcase run towards them. Stedington put his finger back on the button that held open the doors and nodded to the breathless newcomer.

  ‘Evening, James. May I introduce Miss King, who will be assessing our training needs over the next couple of weeks. This is James Certes of Blenkort & Wilson, solicitors.’

  Willow held out her hand, losing interest in the man as soon as Jeremy pointed out that he did not belong to the bank.

  Chapter Five

  In defiance of Jeremy Stedington’s suggestion – which had seemed too much of an order for her liking – Willow reached the bank well before nine the following morning. She wanted to know as much as possible about the organization and its staff, and that included both the morning and evening rush hour.

  Sitting in an inconspicuous chair in the reception area with a newspaper in front of her, she watched the staff as they came through the double glass doors. There had clearly been many people already at work by the time she arrived, but she saw plenty more. At nine o’clock the three receptionists arrived, dressed in identical suits in the company’s dark red. Having discovered that Willow did not need their assistance and that she had a right to be sitting where she was, they busied themselves with laying out the day’s newspapers and periodicals on the tables, moving the stiffly arranged flowers to positions where they would not get in the way, switching on their computer screens and settling themselves behind the long, curving grey-and-dark-red reception desk.

  Willow had noticed that they, like everyone else, had waved their passes at the two security guards. No one’s card was scrutinized and no one was challenged. Some greeted the guards by name and were greeted in return, but others simply hurried through, running for lift doors that were already closing. By half past nine the stream had dwindled to a few obviously senior men, who strolled in through the doors to the salutes of the guards. Each of them carried the muddily pink Financial Times, but none of them had a briefcase, and none bothered to show his pass.

  At last Willow folded up her own newspaper, put it into her own briefcase and asked one of the receptionists to warn Jeremy Stedington that she was on her way up. With all her senses alert she made her way to the fourth floor, walked out of the lift as Richard had done on the night of the murder and stopped in front of the electronically locked doors.

  Just as he had said, there was a keypad to the right with an ordinary-looking bell underneath it. She pressed the bell and waited. After a moment the doors swung open and she found herself face to face with Jeremy Stedington. That morning he was dressed in an unstriped dark-grey suit that looked utterly conventional until he turned suddenly, making the jacket blow open. Willow saw with amusement that it was lined with scarlet paisley-patterned silk. His crisp white shirt had narrow red lines on it to match and his tie was neatly patterned with diagonal rows of scarlet frogs on a dark-green background.

  ‘Come on in, Miss King.’ Willow admired the lack of complicity or even amusement in his deep voice and stepped across the threshold.

  Immediately in front of her were two pale-grey desks facing each other and at right angles to the door. There was a tousled blond woman in her early twenties at the right-hand desk and a darker, tidier one tapping away at the keyboard of a businesslike word processor opposite her.

  ‘Come and meet the girls,’ said Stedington. ‘This is Tracy Blank and the one who can’t tear herself away from her work is Maggie Blake. Girls, this is Miss King who has come to assess the training needs of the department. She’ll be in and out of the office over the next week or so.’

  Willow was interested to see that the second secretary’s eyes were reddened and that she looked as though she had not slept. Tracy, on the other hand, seemed positively alert with curiosity.

  ‘Perhaps I could have a word with you both, later?’ Willow said gently, in deference to Maggie’s obvious unhappiness. Both secretaries nodded. Maggie returned to her typing at once.

  ‘You’ll obviously need a desk,’ Stedington was saying as he led Willow away to the left, ‘and we wondered whether you’d mind taking over one that was used by a colleague of ours who died recently.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Willow, hoping that she sounded convincingly casual. As they rounded the dark-red felt screen behind the secretaries’desks, she saw a row of grey carrels, each one divided from its neighbours by similar screens. Between the screens there was a fitted desk, about four feet wide, containing a small computer screen and keyboard, a speaker telephone, shelves of books and piles of paper. Each desk was provided with a remarkably comfortable tilting, swivelling chair, upholstered in the ubiquitous dark red.

  It was easy to see which miniature office had belonged to Sarah Allfarthing. The chair was obviously new and there was a section of the anthracite-coloured carpet that was less scuffed than the rest.

  Willow stopped, remembering Richard’s horrifyingly vivid description of Sarah’s body. She started as she felt a hand on her elbow.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind? It’s all new. The police took away absolutely everything that was on the desk when she died.’

  Willow gathered herself together, reminding herself that she was a fearless investigator, and smiled at Jeremy Stedington over her shoulder.

  ‘I’m fine. It was a momentary distaste.’ She walked forwards and put her briefcase down on the desk with a snap, noticing that there was an unused stapler already there beside a new roll of Sellotape on a flimsy plastic stand, a box of paperclips and a handful of pencils.

  Jeremy introduced Willow to all the other members of the department and explained that she would be working there for at least the next week, observing them as they worked, asking them questions and ultimately writing a report on a possible training schedule. Then he took her through a pair of unlocked doors at the far end of the long room.

  ‘Our offices are here,’ he explained, pushing open one door.

  ‘Our?’

  ‘The directors. There are six of us. I’ll take you and introduce you in a moment, but I wanted a word first. I hope you really don’t mind about Sarah’s desk. The thing is: the boys are all rather jumpy and I thought it would be good for them if they got used to seeing someone working there. Take a bit of the ghostliness away.’

  ‘Good idea. I just hope that the ones who were fond of her won’t resent me – like Maggie, for instance.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t. She’s a thoroughly sensible creature.’ There was enough stress on the pronoun to make Willow remember Emma Gnatche’s reported description of Tracy.

  ‘Now, before I take you to meet the other directors, is there anything you want from me?’ Stedington sat down in a larger version of the swivelling, tilting chairs in the main office and leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head and his arms and legs spread wide.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wil
low, trying to ignore what she had read of body language. She wondered how much Jeremy knew about pheromones and whether he understood that his subconscious was urging him to send her signals of dominance or attraction through his sweat glands. ‘I’d like a list of all the people who left the building on the night of the murder after the main rush. Can you get that for me?’

  ‘I can try, but it may not be complete. We don’t clock on and off here, you know.’ He straightened his chair and picked up a pen to write himself a note.

  ‘No, I know. I watched this morning. But I also saw that most people arrived in a bunch and then there were stragglers. I assume it’s the same in the evening. The security men ought to be able to remember whether there were any people who went out alone, later than the rest. And I’d also like a list of everyone who attended the dance. Is that possible?’

  ‘Surely. We had problems with gate-crashers one year and so everyone had to bring his invitation this time and be ticked off on arrival. I can get you a copy of the list easily.’

  ‘Wonderful. Then I think I’d better get back to my new desk and start sorting myself out.’

  ‘Leaving the other directors until later?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Willow with a smile. ‘I do want to talk to Mr Biggleigh-Clart, though. Can you arrange it?’

  Stedington shrugged. ‘All I’d be able to do would be talk to Annabel – his secretary. Why don’t you ring her direct? The number will be in your office directory: a dark-red booklet. Or send her a message through the computer system. Will you be able to work Sarah’s computer?’

  ‘I expect I’ll cope with it.’

  ‘May I take you out to lunch later?’ Stedington seemed to think that he might have sounded unhelpful and needed to make amends.

  Willow shook her head. ‘I think I’d rather prowl about and listen. But it was kind of you to suggest it.’

  She turned away and went back to her desk, where she immediately switched on the computer screen. As it flickered into life she searched the grey bookshelf for the manual that ought to be there. It did not take her very long to find out how to work the electronic-mail system and discover that without a password she could not bring up on the screen any of the messages that had been sent to Sarah Allfarthing in the last few days before she died.