Evil in Return (8 page)

Alex studied Tim’s face for any sign that his thoughts were running in the same direction, but Tim seemed absorbed by the glass in his hand and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. The elephant in the room, the subtext that neither of them dared to refer to. They had been doing it for years. He felt a hypocrite.

‘It all seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?’

Tim gave him a penetrating look. ‘What do you mean?’

‘University.’ He chickened out as usual.

Tim nodded. ‘But at least you still kept in touch with Joe. How was he when you last saw him? Happy?’

‘Yes. I think he was. Finally. Although he hated the publicity mill, it was good for him to have some recognition.’

‘You two were always very close.’

‘I thought you were too.’

Tim shrugged. ‘We were once. But work . . . and being married . . . having a family . . . It all gets in the way.’

And Tim’s desire to distance himself from that time, Alex thought. Although Joe had never said anything, he had sensed the slow, quiet rejection and been stung by it. It was probably at the root of his recent bitterness about Tim. As for Tim, he had created a buffer zone of success and respectability, but it could easily be blown away. Maybe that was what he feared. He wondered how Tim would react when he heard what Joe had told him.

‘When did you last see Joe?’ Alex asked, wondering how to bring it up.

‘It must have been at least a year ago, then he turned up out of the blue at my Chambers a couple of weeks ago. You know what he was like. Never thought to ring ahead. I was in court, so he hung around for a bit until my clerk turfed him out. After that he phoned a couple of times, but I was rushed off my feet and I didn’t get around to returning the calls. I feel bad about it now.’

‘You don’t know what he was after?’

‘I assumed he wanted to borrow some money, like the last time.’ There was no disapproval in Tim’s tone; it was just a simple statement of fact.

‘It can’t have been money he was after. He made a packet out of the book.’

‘Well, sod that. If you ask me, he doesn’t deserve a penny.’ Tim took a deep draught and stared down at his glass as if lost in it. It wasn’t really the money that Tim resented, Alex suspected.

More the fact that Joe had used some of their common experiences for his own ends. It was all too close for comfort.

‘I hadn’t seen him for a while either,’ Alex said. ‘Then he called me. It must have been about the same time he came to see you. He’d had a couple of funny emails and he wondered who’d sent them, if it was one of us.’

Tim looked up at him over the edge of his tumbler. ‘One of us? What sort of thing?’

‘They were really odd, like they were part of a book, or something, but with no beginning or ending, just a paragraph cut off mid sentence, written in some sort of funny gothic print.’

‘From Joe’s book, you mean?’

‘No. The first one talked about an old country house, set in woods. It was all pretty bland.’

‘He showed it to you?’

‘Not the first. I think he deleted it. But I saw the second one. It was weird. It described some people going down into a crypt, with candles, laughing, music playing . . .’

Tim’s expression hardened. ‘What else?’

‘That’s about it, but he was quite worked up about it.’

‘He always over-dramatised.’

‘Maybe.’

Tim held Alex’s gaze. ‘I assume you didn’t send them?’

‘That’s what Joe wanted to know, but no, it wasn’t me.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me either. It must be Paul or Danny having a laugh.’

‘Joe didn’t think so. For starters, he said he hadn’t spoken to either of them for a long while and neither of them had his email address.’

‘It’s pretty easy to find out. They could ask any one of his friends, or they probably rang his publisher and made up some story.’

‘But why? What’s the point?’

‘Envy, maybe. You said the book’s a success and he made lots of money. Maybe someone’s jealous and wanted to rattle his cage, make him feel a bit less full of himself.’

The bitterness in Tim’s tone took Alex aback. That Tim, who seemed to have achieved everything he wanted, might actually be jealous, was an odd thought. Maybe he had sent the emails after all, although bitterness aside, it wouldn’t be in character. If not Tim, it had to be either Paul or Danny. Paul had a devious side, but of the two, his money was on Danny. The weasel, as they’d called him. He pictured his long-nosed, freckled face, the small, beady brown eyes behind the tinted John Lennon glasses. He had always been a bit of a joker, but the humour was razor-sharp and usually at someone else’s expense. He certainly liked to push things to the wire when he could.

‘Who do you mean?’ he asked, watching Tim closely, still undecided.

Tim drained his glass and put it down forcefully on the corner of the desk. ‘I don’t know. I can’t believe either Danny or Paul would be so petty.’

‘Well, if it’s not one of us, there’s a simple explanation. Someone’s talked.’

‘I hope to God not.’ Tim stood up abruptly and moved over to the window. He pulled open the shutters and gazed out for a moment, as though searching for something. Then he turned around, frowning, and jammed his hands deep in his pockets.

‘Is it blackmail? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Blackmail?’

‘Was someone trying to blackmail Joe?’

Maybe the dope had dulled his brain, but thinking back to that evening he was sure Joe hadn’t said anything about blackmail. ‘I don’t think so. There were just the two emails. No threats. No demands. As far as I know, there was no follow-up.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive.’

Tim looked relieved. ‘Well, that’s something.’

‘But now he’s dead and in a cemetery too. It’s a bit of a coincidence.’

‘A coincidence?’ Tim shook his head. ‘I’m not with you. Loads of people visit the Brompton Cemetery, as I found out pretty graphically in a case I did recently. It’s an interesting place during daylight and as safe as anywhere. All sorts of famous people are buried there, you know.’

‘As I said, you’re the one obsessed with graveyards, not Joe. What are you getting at?’

‘My point is, Joe being there doesn’t have to mean anything.’

‘But it’s hardly close to where he lived.’

‘Maybe he was going to watch Chelsea and something happened.’

Alex gave him a withering look. ‘The season’s over.’

‘OK. Maybe he was meeting someone or just going for a walk.’

‘But why there?’ The question hung in the air for a moment before he continued: ‘Do you think . . .’ He stopped and shook his head. He knew what Tim would say.

‘What is it?’

He studied Tim for a moment, feeling suddenly foolish.

‘Spit it out.’

For a moment he didn’t answer, then he took a deep breath. ‘Well, I wondered if I should go to the police.’

Tim stared at him. ‘Jesus Christ. Have you gone stark raving mad?’

‘Isn’t finding Joe’s killer more important than anything else?’

‘Whoa, hang on a sec. Now you’re getting as paranoid as Joe. Maybe he wrote the emails himself.’

‘Joe? Why would he?’

‘Perhaps it was a wind-up. Perhaps he wanted attention.’

‘I told you, I saw one of them. And I saw how shaken he was.’

‘He was an actor.’

‘I tell you, he wasn’t faking.’

‘OK. But I don’t see why you’re trying to link the emails to what happened to him. Someone’s just having a bit of fun, that’s all.’

‘Fun? I still think—’

Tim held up his hand. ‘Let’s look at this logically. What are the possibilities? If it’s one of us, it’s a joke, although not a very amusing one, I agree. I don’t believe for a minute any of us would resort to blackmail.’

‘And if it’s not one of us?’

He frowned. ‘Well, I still don’t believe it but, for argument’s sake, if someone has inadvertently let something slip, then maybe we are talking blackmail.’

‘I swear Joe never mentioned the idea.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t want to worry you. He may have just been sounding you out. See what you’d say. Anyway, if blackmail was the intention, why kill him? What’s the point? You’d be killing the golden goose.’

He could see from the stubborn set of Tim’s mouth that there was no point arguing. Anyway, it was what he wanted to hear. His head told him Tim was talking sense – hell, none of them wanted to dig up the past unnecessarily. The link was pretty tenuous. He should ignore the stupid whisperings of his heart.

Tim was looming over him, searching his face for a reaction. Again Alex wondered if maybe Tim was behind the emails. He drained his glass and got to his feet. ‘So, you really don’t think the police should know?’

‘No, I don’t. I’m speaking here as a friend rather than in a legal capacity, of course.’ He smiled and put his arm around Alex, giving his shoulder a friendly squeeze as he walked him to the door.

‘I’ll remind you of that when I get arrested for withholding vital information.’

‘Now you’re being silly. Listen, the police are bound to find the emails when they go through what’s on Joe’s computer. It’s one of the first things they’ll do. Let them worry about what to make of them. What they don’t need is you sending them up a blind alley. OK?’

9

Tartaglia sat at his desk in his shoebox of an office. Logan’s laptop was still with the experts, being analysed, but a copy of the hard drive had been couriered over for them to check. Wightman and Downes were busy going through the contents of Mail, Address Book and iPhoto, but Tartaglia wanted to look through Logan’s other files himself. He had borrowed an Apple laptop, which lay open on the desk in front of him, and he plugged the memory stick Wightman had given him into the drive and opened the folder marked Joe Logan.

Inside he found two folders – one labelled Personal and the other Work – and a long list of individual items. He trawled through a miscellany of jPegs, podcasts and internet downloads that Logan hadn’t bothered to file or delete, but found no common theme or anything of particular interest. He clicked open the Personal folder and scanned the long list of documents, most of which were several years old. Logan had been as haphazard with his files as with his housekeeping and, again, had made no attempt to organise them by category. He sorted them by date order and opened the most recent file, which had been created three weeks before Logan’s death.

It was a letter, addressed to the Reverend Tom Sutton, Headmaster of St Thomas’s, the school where Logan had been employed, thanking him for the ‘very kind offer’ of a permanent job in the English Department to start that autumn.

Tartaglia wondered if Logan was being polite or if he had actually intended to go back to teaching in spite of the success of his book. Logan said that he wanted to think things over and, in the final paragraph, he mentioned that he would be coming to the school to pick up some things in the next couple of weeks and that he would drop by to see the headmaster, whom he addressed as Tom, and give him his answer then. Wondering if Logan had found time for the trip before he was killed, Tartaglia made a note to check it immediately. If Logan’s things were still at the school, it would explain why they had found so little on the boat.

Nearly an hour later, after ploughing through a series of letters to bank managers, insurance companies and the like and finding nothing of any interest, he decided to hand over the task of going through the rest to Wightman. He turned his attention to the Work folder, which contained a few documents mainly relating to publicity, as well as another folder entitled Books. Inside were individual chapters and drafts of Indian Summer, character notes, various attempts at a blurb for the jacket, and several jPegs showing versions of the UK cover. He scanned them all but found nothing relating to a second book. He had already spoken again to Jana Ryan and questioned her about Logan’s second book but she had been unable to add anything to her earlier comments. It looked as if the only person Logan had talked to about the new book had been Anna Paget.

Frustrated, he picked up the phone and was about to dial Wightman’s extension, when Wightman appeared in the doorway.

‘I was just about to buzz you,’ Tartaglia said.

‘I must be telepathic, Sir. Thought you’d be interested in this.’ He passed Tartaglia a sheet of paper. It was an email from Logan to Anna Paget at her work address, dated two months before.

Hi Anna, thanks for your letter and kind words. The material you enclosed is certainly interesting. As you say, there’s a connection that may be worth exploring. I’d love to see the article you mentioned. Let’s meet up and have a drink and see where we go with this. I’m in London for a few months, staying on a friend’s boat in Maida Vale. I’m working on another book so short on time, but if you don’t mind coming this way, there are a couple of half-decent pubs in the area. Give me a bell and let me know what you’d like to do.

He added his address and mobile number and signed himself ‘Joe’.

‘Interesting,’ Tartaglia said, looking up. ‘I wonder what he means by “connection”. He also mentions another book but I can’t find anything that looks like one on the drive you gave me. That’s why I was calling you. Are you sure we have everything from Logan’s laptop?’

‘That’s what they told me.’

‘Then you’d better get on to them. Tell them we think there’s a file missing.’

‘Is there a title, or a description of what we’re looking for?’

‘It’s his second novel, that’s all we know. Get them to try and recover anything that’s been recently deleted off that computer.

What about the email from Alice in Wonderland?’

‘No joy. The address is untraceable.’

Tartaglia shook his head wearily. ‘We’ve got to find that book.’

‘I’ll get onto it right away.’

As he left the room, Minderedes came in. ‘I’ve found out a bit more about Anna Paget, Boss. The barman at Kazbar was very helpful.’

‘And?’

‘She’s single, as far as he knows, lives around the corner from the café and likes to work there most mornings and sometimes afternoons, depending on how noisy it gets. Doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, likes skinny lattés with cinnamon and San Pellegrino with lime—’

‘I get the picture. Anything important?’

‘After you left, I waited until she’d gone, then I went back inside. The barman was there the night before last when she was supposed to meet Logan. There’s no CCTV but he more or less confirmed what she said. He couldn’t remember exactly when she arrived but said it was before eight and that she left not more than an hour later. She was alone. She sat on the sofa where she was today, had a large glass of orange juice, which she didn’t finish, and was on her BlackBerry most of the time.’

‘He’s observant.’

‘I think he has the hots for her. He also said the bar wasn’t full. He said she seemed really pissed off when her friend didn’t show. She made some comment to him about not being used to being stood up.’

‘You surprise me. What about the newspaper?’

‘I spoke to her editor and he also confirmed what she said. She’s freelance and the idea for the interview was her own, although they’re clearly very excited about it, particularly now Logan’s dead.’

‘Aren’t people something?’

Minderedes nodded. ‘Anyway, he’s worked with her for a couple of years and spoke highly of her.’

‘Well, that gets us nowhere. Has she sent over anything yet?’

‘No. Nothing so far.’

‘Call her and tell her I want all the stuff she said she’d send round. I want it now, no excuses. Whatever she sent Logan worked like magic, according to an email we found on his computer.’

‘Why does it matter?’

‘Because I’m curious, that’s why. Any problems, send someone around for the originals and we’ll let her have them back in due course.’

As Minderedes turned to go, Jane Downes appeared behind him in the doorway. ‘I’ve managed to locate Logan’s mum, Sir. His dad’s dead and she’s remarried and living in Portsmouth. Someone from her local station’s broken the news and she’s coming up to London tonight. She’s insisting on seeing Logan’s body, poor woman. Apparently he was her only child.’