Mixing With Murder Page 24

  ‘Give me my passport, you bitch!’ Lisa hissed in my face and we struggled together on the floor.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a scrap and normally I’d have been well able to take care of myself. But this time I was handicapped by the knowledge that my opponent was pregnant. As a result, I couldn’t do several things I might otherwise have done. In the end, I placed the palms of both hands flat against her face and pushed with all my strength. She tried to bite me, as I knew she would, but it isn’t easy to bite a flat surface. Her grip on my jacket slackened as she took one hand from it to tug at my hands over her face. I managed to wriggle out from beneath her. Before she could turn and grapple with me again I seized a hank of her long fair hair and wrapped it round my fist.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelled as I jerked her head backwards.

  ‘Let go of her!’ roared Ned. He forgot Ganesh and leapt towards us. He hauled me away from Lisa but I still had tight hold of her hair and she was still yelling blue murder.

  ‘Let go!’ shouted Ned and brought the side of his hand down in a chopping motion on my wrist.

  The pain was excruciating. I released Lisa’s hair. She scrabbled to her feet and made for the door. Holding my wrist, I dashed after her. Ned and Ganesh, who had finally wriggled out of his beanbag, followed. They got wedged together at the top of the stairs while Lisa and I clattered down. She pulled open the front door and dashed out into the street with me in close pursuit.

  She made for her own front door and hammered on it. ‘Mum! Mum! Let me in!’

  I’d caught up now and she turned and aimed a kick at me as she hunted in her pocket, presumably for her door key.

  Behind her the door flew open and she catapulted back into the hallway of her family home to land at her mother’s feet.

  ‘Lisa?’ Jennifer gasped.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum!’ Lisa jumped to her feet. ‘Just shut the door and keep her out!’ She pointed at me.

  There was a movement at the rear of the hall and another person moved forward to join us.

  ‘Lisa Stallard?’ asked Hayley Pereira.

  Lisa gaped at her. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Lisa darling,’ stammered Jennifer. ‘This policewoman has just come wanting to talk to you. I told her you were out. What’s going on?’

  Lisa was as white as a sheet, pressed back against the open front door. She looked like the trapped animal she was between Pereira and me. Jennifer, her face as white as her daughter’s, put her arms round Lisa protectively.

  ‘I didn’t kill him!’ Lisa squealed in a strange high-pitched voice. ‘I didn’t kill him!’

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ Jennifer was saying, ‘it’s all right. Don’t be frightened. Sergeant Pereira, it’s a mistake, my daughter—’

  There was a squeak of wheels and we all looked up. Paul Stallard was attempting to manoeuvre his chair through the doorway at the far end of the hall. The space was wide enough but he was agitated and in his haste he was awkward. The chair struck the door frame on one side and he had to reverse and try again. This time he struck the door frame on the other side. He was growing ever more fretful and frustrated.

  ‘What is it?’ he shouted above the banging and scraping. ‘What is going on? What’s all the damn noise? Who are all these people? Jennifer! Come and help me with this bloody chair!’

  Lisa put out her hand as if to stop him advancing any further. ‘No, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘No, Dad, please no . . . Don’t come out here. I don’t want you to hear this.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Well, Fran,’ said Hayley Pereira. ‘You haven’t been exactly helpful, have you?’

  Why is it the police like to be so sarcastic? They lead frustrated lives, if you ask me, and it has to find its outlet somewhere. They seldom show any gratitude, that’s for sure. I had worked the whole thing out for them and was prepared to tell them all about it. Yet here I sat about to be accused of lack of cooperation.

  Pereira was wearing her peacock-blue cotton shirt and a denim jacket and pants. I wondered who did her laundry. Every time I saw her she looked crisply ironed and bandbox-fresh.

  I, on the other hand, looked hot and bothered after my tussle with Lisa on the floor of Ned’s flat, my jeans needed a wash and my T-shirt was torn where Lisa had wrenched it. There was no mirror in here but I had a feeling my right eye was swelling. It felt puffy and when I closed the left eye, the vision in the right one wasn’t as good as it had been. My wrist was painful and I hoped it wasn’t broken.

  Our progress from the doorway of the Stallard home to the cop shop had been interesting. When Lisa realised Pereira meant to take her in, she tried to bolt for it. I was still in the doorway and she cannoned into me. I grabbed her and so did Pereira. Ned came in to the rescue and Ganesh piled in too, although I don’t think he had the faintest idea what he ought to do.

  It was a real punch-up. Pereira had to call for back-up and we were all shoved into the back of a police van and sped off through the city. At the station, they separated us. After an interminable wait during which they didn’t even offer me a cup of tea, Pereira had arrived and marched me into an interview room.

  It was the usual dingy sort of place familiar to me from London police stations. The paint was scratched and a brand new coat was badly needed. The walls were divided into bottle-green lower halves and what had been cream upper halves. The bottle-green paint had darkened to almost black and the cream to brown. The air smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke and I thought someone had vomited in there in the recent past.

  Pereira sat across a table from me, looking quite at home even though her neat personal appearance was in striking contrast to her surroundings. But then, in a manner of speaking, this was home for her, or at least her place of work. Lying on the table between us was a folder and Lisa’s passport, which I’d handed over to Pereira. Now she tapped the passport.

  ‘You have made a claim that Miss Stallard was intending to leave the country to avoid being questioned in relation to the death of Ivo Simić.’ Her voice was brisk and impersonal. But the meaning was clear. I had to back up what I said or be accused of wasting Pereira’s time.

  ‘Yes, she was, she is. She will do, if you give her back her passport. Don’t believe any story she tells you about a cruise ship. Check it out. There won’t be any ship. Don’t believe anything she tells you. She’s an ace liar.’

  If I sounded bitter it wasn’t surprising. I’d been on the receiving end of Lisa’s lies as well as her fist. I still couldn’t get over my first view of her in the flesh, standing in the doorway of her family’s home in Summertown. She’d looked such a nice girl. I should have concentrated on the promotional photo Mickey had given me of Lisa in her rhinestone cowboy outfit. I wondered what her birth sign was and whether it might not be Gemini. She was two people in one, all right. Little Miss Jekyll and Hyde, I thought, a dutiful daughter whose only mistake was to be stage-struck and yet also a murderer.

  Pereira looked at me like a dowager who’s just seen someone eat peas off a knife. ‘You’ve made some other statements with regard to Lisa Stallard. You’ve accused her of murdering Ivo Simić. She denies this, of course.’

  ‘She would, wouldn’t she?’ I snapped.

  ‘I must say I find it an extraordinary and very serious accusation, Fran. How did she manage to do it? Also, why? There seems to be a singular lack of motive in all this.’

  ‘I can explain it,’ I said.

  ‘I was rather hoping you would. I am also hoping you’ll explain your own actions which have hardly been those of a respectable law-abiding citizen.’

  ‘Oi!’ I said indignantly. ‘I haven’t broken any law.’

  ‘You knew the identity of the drowned man and you said nothing. That’s called withholding information and, what’s more, the rest of your actions constitute interference with an investigation.’ Pereira had worked up a gear and was getting into inquisitorial mode.

  ‘I answered all the questions you asked me
and I answered them honestly,’ I argued. A heretic arguing with Torquemada would have had as little luck.

  She leaned forward, jaw jutting, to hold my gaze. Her own was what I believe is usually described as ‘steelyeyed’. ‘You didn’t tell me the drowned man’s identity.’

  ‘You didn’t ask that one,’ I mumbled unwisely.

  ‘Don’t play silly games with me!’ she snapped back. ‘You should have volunteered it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ It was time to eat humble pie. She was right. I had withheld information and there really wasn’t any way I could get out of it. It was up to Pereira whether she decided to charge me with obstructing inquiries. I needed her on my side. Perhaps, I thought, a touch of pathos would help.

  ‘I was scared,’ I whimpered pretty convincingly.

  ‘You? Of what?’ was the brutal retort.

  ‘Mickey Allerton,’ I said. ‘He’s the one who sent me to Oxford. He can be a very scary man and he was holding my dog hostage. That is, until she ran away from the person looking after her.’

  ‘That’s a new one on me,’ said Pereira silkily. ‘Holding a dog as hostage? But it ran away, you say. An enterprising sort of dog, then. And has this remarkable animal turned up yet?’

  I shook my head and must have looked genuinely miserable because she went on more kindly, ‘If what you say is true and the dog is loose in a familiar part of town it will probably find its way home eventually.’

  I nodded. I was hoping the same. But it reminded me that I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be back in London tracking Bonnie down. There was a large wasp trapped against a window-pane high up on the wall of the interview room. I wondered how it had got in here since the stale air suggested the window was never opened. From time to time the insect buzzed, at first angrily and then in frustration. Now it was beginning to sound desolate. I felt a certain empathy with it. Anyone would want to be out of here. It ought not to give up. I certainly wasn’t going to.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘you found Lisa without me.’

  ‘Did I?’ Pereira wasn’t going to help me out.

  ‘You were at her house, you’d come to ask her questions. How did you get there, anyway?’ My curiosity overcame me.

  She lifted one eyebrow. That’s a neat trick and I’ve never been able to do it satisfactorily. ‘I am a professional, Fran, you seem to to forget. Anyway, you led her to to me yourself. You told a Croatian girl called Vera Krejcmar to go to the police and identify Ivo Simić.’

  ‘Yes, I did!’ I burst out unwisely. ‘So I didn’t withhold his identity. Vera wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t insisted.’

  Pereira pursed her lips. Even her lipstick hadn’t smudged. I supposed she’d had time to repair it after the fracas at the Stallard house.

  ‘It’s a fine point, Fran. You made me very curious about that guest house. Not only did you live there, and the young Americans who reported the finding of the body, but Vera works there and apparently the dead man, Simić, had stayed there, although the owner didn’t know about it.

  ‘So I went and had a long talk with the owner. It turned out that, although she’d been unaware Simić had stayed in her place hidden by Vera in her room, she wasn’t unacquainted with Simić’s employer, one Mickey Allerton.’

  Pereira hesitated. ‘I then ran Simić’s fingerprints through records. I should have done that earlier, perhaps, but originally I’d no reason to think the drowned runner would be known to us. But he had form of a minor kind.’

  Ivo had been in trouble with the law. I, too, should have thought of that possibility sooner.

  Pereira was speaking again. ‘So then I got in touch with the Met and asked them to give me the low-down on a club owner called Mickey or Michael Allerton. So I do know whom you’re talking about and yes, I agree with you, he would be a man to take very seriously. Armed with my new information, I went back to the guest house and interviewed both women there. They told me a story about Simić coming to Oxford to seek out a dancer called Lisa Stallard who had been working for Allerton. The common factor in all of this appeared to be Allerton and his relationship with Lisa Stallard. So I tracked down Miss Stallard.’

  Pereira leaned back in her chair. ‘As you know, I’ve just been talking to Lisa. She admits she met with the deceased, Ivo Simić, early on the morning of his death. She does not admit any part in that death.’

  ‘She killed him!’ I interrupted.

  Pereira didn’t turn a hair. ‘That’s a wild statement, Fran. There’s no evidence of foul play. The body has no obvious injury. She’s only a young girl and to inflict any injury on Simić . . .’

  ‘She’s just given me a black eye!’ I interrupted. ‘Look!’ I pointed at it. ‘She attacked me! Don’t tell me she’s a weakling who couldn’t inflict any injury.’

  ‘Do you want to see a doctor?’ Pereira wasn’t interested in my black eye as such, but if I walked out of there and collapsed from some unsuspected head injury then there would be an internal inquiry at the very least and she didn’t want that.

  ‘No, I want a chance to explain my theory.’

  We had reached a temporary impasse. Pereira conceded a point. ‘All right, she’s a dancer and dancers are athletes, very fit. But although she might handle herself very well in a scrap with you, she’d be no match for Simić. To suggest she killed him is fanciful.’

  ‘So why did he drown?’ I demanded. ‘He was over six foot tall. The river’s probably only about that depth, if that, by the bank.’

  ‘Perhaps he hit his head?’ Pereira suggested. ‘Unconscious, he might have drowned.’

  ‘You just told me there was no obvious sign of injury on the body. If he hit his head there would be an abrasion, some sign. Does the forensic report refer to anything?’

  Pereira glanced at the folder on the desk. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Perhaps he just couldn’t swim?’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Look, let me explain it my way,’ I begged.

  ‘I’d love to hear your theory,’ said Pereira, sarcastic again. ‘I’d be interested also to know at what point before this morning you were planning to confide it to me.’

  ‘Before this morning, I couldn’t have. It was only this morning and last night that I got it sorted out in my own head.’ I paused but she said nothing. The wasp made a sad, small fizzing noise.

  ‘Dancers are like actors and there are always more of them than there are dancing jobs,’ I began. ‘I should have asked myself at once what was so special about this one that Mickey Allerton sent me after her. But I didn’t. Mickey was holding my dog as surety against my carrying out his little commission, right? I didn’t do it for the money. I want you to know that. I didn’t like the job. But I did want my dog!’

  Pereira nodded. The wasp was silent now, crawling slowing around the perimeter of the window-pane.

  ‘So I came here. I contacted Lisa and arranged to meet her. How do you think I felt when I got there and found Ivo floating in the river? I didn’t want to get mixed up with murder. Who would?’

  ‘You thought it was murder? You had some reason for that?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, come on. How could it be an accident? Ivo? You said yourself just now what a big strapping bloke he was. He just tripped and fell in the river? Someone mugged him? Come off it.’

  ‘Accidents happen. People don’t automatically think of murder,’ she objected.

  ‘Where I come from, if an accident like that happens to someone like Ivo, they do,’ I countered.

  ‘But you attempted, you told me, to drag him ashore. That was how you fell in yourself, so you said. You thought he might be alive.’

  ‘Trying to grab him wasn’t the brightest idea,’ I agreed. ‘But I wanted to do the good citizen bit. I’d have thought twice about touching the body if I had known at once who it was. When I saw his face, bobbing in the water next to mine, it was horrible,’ I reminded her. ‘I still think about it.’

  Pereira made a sympathetic murmur but it sounded perfunctory.

  �
�So,’ I went on, ‘you know what happened next. I saw Lisa arrive. I didn’t know it then, but it was her second arrival on the scene. I signalled her to scram, because I knew Allerton wouldn’t want her involved.

  ‘Later when I told her the dead man was Ivo she freaked out or made like she did. I’ve studied acting and believe me, she’s good. She said he must have come to Oxford searching for her with the idea that if he returned her to Allerton, he’d be in Allerton’s good books. Jasna, another Croatian and a dancer at the club, looked likely to lose her job. Ivo, according to Lisa, wanted to help her. I learned later, not from Lisa, that Ivo was also worried about his own job. At the time Lisa’s explanation made good sense to me and when I talked to Vera she seemed to back it up.’