Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [172]
“No, it isn’t the real question,” Vivienne Tully said. “The real question is how long it will take you to walk to the door, where I shall open it for you, and then close it upon your timely departure. Our discussion is over.”
“Thing is,” Barbara said, “I do have to walk there, don’t I? To the door, that is.”
“Or you can be dragged, of course.”
“Kicking, screaming, and howling for the neighbours to hear? Raising a ruckus the likes of which gets you noticed rather more than you’d probably like to be noticed?”
“I want you out of here, Sergeant. There’s not a single thing illegal in any part of my life. I don’t see what my having lunch, dinner, drinks, or anything else with Bernard Fairclough has to do with Ian Cresswell unless Bernard handed the receipts to Ian and Ian didn’t want to pay the bills. But he’d hardly lose his life over that, would he?”
“Would that’ve been like Ian? Tight with the baron’s money, was he?”
“I don’t know. I had no contact with Ian once I left the firm, which was years ago. Is that all you want to know? Because, as I told you, I have an appointment.”
“There’s still the matter of the keys to be cleared up.”
Vivienne smiled mirthlessly. “Let me wish you luck in that matter.” She walked to the front door of the flat, then, and she opened it. She said, “If you don’t mind…?” and really, there was nothing for it but for Barbara to cooperate. She’d got what she could from Vivienne, and the fact that Vivienne had been unsurprised to have Scotland Yard come calling in the first place— not to mention the fact that she’d managed the nearly impossible feat of not putting a foot wrong during their entire conversation— told Barbara that this was a case in which forewarned had led effortlessly to forearmed. There was nothing for it but to try another route. Nothing, after all, was impossible.
She took the stairs down, rather than the lift. They deposited her opposite the table on which the postal cubbies stood. The porter was there. He’d gathered up the post from where it had been dropped into the mail slot at the front of the building, and he was in the process of distributing it. He heard her and turned.
“Back again, are you?” he said in greeting. “Still hoping for a flat?”
Barbara joined him at the table, the better to have a look at what he was putting into the cubbies. A signed declaration of She’s guilty of something would have gone down a treat, shoved into Vivienne Tully’s cubby or, better yet, handed over to Barbara to be sent along to Lynley. But everything seemed to be straightforward enough from what she could see from the return addresses of BT, Thames Water, Television Licensing, and the like.
She said, “Got an in at Foxtons. As things turn out in the world of property sales, flat six will be going on offer soon. I thought I’d have a quick look.”
“Miss Tully’s flat?” the porter said. “I heard naught about that. Odd, as people gen’rally tell me since there’ll be some coming and going once it hits the market.”
“Could be it’s a sudden thing,” Barbara said.
“S’pose. Never thought she’d sell, though. Not with the situation she’s got. ’Tisn’t easy to find nice digs where a good school’s just round the corner, eh?”
Barbara felt a frisson of excitement shoot through her. “School?” she said carefully. “Exactly what school are we talking about?”
9 NOVEMBER
WINDERMERE
CUMBRIA
Zed Benjamin found that he was quite looking forward to his morning chat with Yaffa Shaw, and he wondered if this was what true partnership was like between a man and a woman. If so, he also wondered why, for years, he’d been avoiding it like a Romany beggar on the steps of a church.
When he rang her, she gave the verbal sign that his mother was within listening distance. She said, “Zed, my little puppy, let me tell you all the ways I’ve been missing you,” and she constructed a quick paean to his intelligence, his wit, his affability, and added the warmth of his hugs for good measure.
Zed reckoned his mother would be over the moon at that. “Hmm, I’m missing you as well,” he said in reply, without thinking