CHAPTER 11
The sun broke through the thinning cloud as Pat pulled up outside Sue’s Georgian townhouse in Islington.
She paid the driver in cash and slammed the door, then breathed in the London air.
Pollution, car exhaust, with a base note of fetid rubbish and the stale alcohol that seeped out of the pavement slabs.
It smelt like home, another home. She’d never minded the chaos and the dirt when she lived in London full-time, but it was a different story now, coming back from the Downs.
It was jarring, and yet familiar and comforting too.
She’d spent years in the capital. She hadn’t been born or raised there, but somehow London had got under her skin, and she would always love it.
Pat entered the house with her key and punched in the number to turn off the beeping alarm.
Sue was still at work and would not be home for a while.
She put down her overnight bag and walked through to the kitchen at the back, with its French windows that looked out onto the two-tier garden.
Sue liked to entertain. She had a large range gas cooker and a broad stainless-steel-fronted fridge that Pat opened to find it was full of half-drunk bottles of wine, jars of spices and sauces and gherkins and pickles.
There were cookery books stacked on top of each other on a shelf with bits of paper and old envelopes sticking out, marking favourite recipes.
Food and cooking were one of the few subjects that Sue and Prichard could talk about.
But on the whole, she really didn’t get him; she found that laugh too much.
Pat had invested in a budget airline at the beginning of lockdown, when all flights were grounded and their shares plummeted, and now they were finally showing a good profit.
She had also followed the wellness industry closely and had bought shares in the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the weight-loss injection pens that had now boomed in popularity.
She was doing well. She smiled to herself.
Perhaps she should think about replacing her car.
But what was the point in that? It worked.
It took her from A to B, she could park it and, most importantly, nobody would ever want to steal it.
No, what she really ought to do with her money was donate it to the Samaritans or Crisis, and maybe jump the NHS queue and get her hip done.
She heard Sue’s key in the lock. ‘Hi,’ she called. ‘I’m in the kitchen.’
Sue walked through to the back.
‘You’re early,’ said Pat as she hugged her ex-girlfriend-turned-good-friend.
‘They let me out early – well, the court went into recess, some problem with non-disclosed evidence,’ said Sue. She stepped back. ‘Let me look at you. You look great, but how are you really? I’ve been so worried. Are you OK?’
Once they’d caught up on how the other had been feeling, the conversation turned, inevitably, to what came next.
‘It’s all so unsettling. Poor Henry.’
Pat nodded. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘There were a lot of final straws and Henry seemed to want out of his relationship. And yet,’ Sue let out a long sigh, ‘and yet, I’ve seen it so many times.
You try and save someone from an abusive partnership and they spend all this time and effort and money, and you do help them, only for them to go straight back into it at the earliest opportunity. It is so frustrating.’
‘Yes, I see it a lot in my world too,’ said Pat.
‘You can do all the work with someone, and still they get pulled right back in. What they haven’t learnt yet is that waiting for scraps of attention from someone isn’t love.
But the trouble is, when they do get a crumb, it gives them such a high it becomes addictive.
The contrast between being dismissed and then suddenly wanted again, that can hook people.
I think that’s what was happening to Henry. ’
‘Yup, poor Henry. Anyway,’ said Sue, ‘I’ve come straight from court as I wanted to see you. Let me get changed, and we can go and have drinks and dinner. Do you want to help yourself to a glass of wine? There’s some in the fridge.’
‘I have never seen so many half-drunk bottles!’
‘Oh, I know. I had some friends over last Thursday, all lawyers, and it ended up being quite heated, banging on about points of law.’
It hadn’t occurred to Pat to bring smart clothes to change into for the evening, but she reckoned her North Face trousers and mismatched anorak and reasonably new trainers would do.
An hour later, they stepped through the heavy velvet curtain that hung around the entrance to Moro, the bustling Moorish restaurant on nearby Exmouth Market.
The scent of cumin, grilled lamb and orange blossom hit them instantly, followed by the comforting sounds of clattering pans, chatter and clinking glasses.
They made an odd pair walking into the restaurant, Pat looking not dissimilar to an Outward Bound instructor and Sue in a lilac tailored suit with a silk vest and black stilettos.
They were shown to a table near the open kitchen, where chefs moved with practised efficiency, flames flaring briefly over the grill and shouts of ‘Service!’ rising above the din.
The table was close enough to catch the action, but tucked against a wall just beyond the whirlwind of the majority of the cooking.
Pat scanned the room as she shrugged off her anorak.
It was full, boisterous, buzzy, packed with foodies, media types and dates in progress.
She caught the eye of a young man at the next table, already flushed from wine, who gave her a slow once-over and then looked at Sue, clearly confused about what kind of duo they were.
A waiter arrived almost immediately, slipping a menu in front of each of them.
‘Would you like something to drink while you look?’ he asked.
Sue smiled. ‘Pomegranate cosmopolitan, please.’
‘Ooh,’ said Pat, excited for an exotic drink, ‘and I’ll have a cocktail with sherry in it.’
‘The rebujito?’ asked the waiter.
‘What’s that?’
‘Fino with mint and lemonade.’
‘Oh no, something stronger, please.’
‘What about the fabuloso? That’s oloroso sherry, vermouth, brandy.’
‘Absolutely, yes please,’ said Pat.
‘OK, I’ll come back and take your food orders in a bit.’
Sue asked, ‘Since when have you become so interested in booze, Pat?’
‘Since Prichard started brewing wines and spirits during Covid. I need to know what a proper drink is supposed to taste like.’
‘Cheers,’ said Sue a few minutes later, raising her glass after the drinks had been delivered in elegant, sweating glasses. ‘To absent friends, colleagues, clients, whatever we have to call them. To Henry.’
‘To Henry,’ said Pat, lifting her own glass and taking a sip.
As they were eating their chargrilled lamb (Pat) and wood-roasted chicken (Sue), Pat said, ‘I saw the crime-scene photographs.’
‘You did!’ Sue sat bolt upright and her eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘How? That’s very odd.’
‘The policeman on the case, or not on the case, showed me them.’
‘I’m amazed. He’s not allowed to do that.’
‘Well, I took him out for a bun and asked about his childhood, and I suppose he wanted to reciprocate.’
‘You make me laugh. Only you could do that. Get some poor copper to open up about his life and he gives you access to restricted material. You are amazing. You bought him a bun?’
‘Well, cake. He’s a comfort eater, unhappy childhood, felt out of place, filling the void with food.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Henry was wearing his Armani suit and his best shoes when he died. He was dressed as if he were going out, not going to kill himself.’
‘Who wears their smartest outfit to kill themselves?’
‘Exactly what I said. I suppose it must happen, but it doesn’t fit for me.’
‘It doesn’t make sense to me either. He was supposed to file a document the following day to object to some development plans for this group he worked for. Save the Seashore.’
‘Save the Seashore?’ Pat sat up straighter.
‘He didn’t really work for them; he helped them with their accounts when they first started fundraising, and since he already had a lawyer, me, he offered to help them with the legal stuff too.
I gave it to my trainee solicitor, I didn’t have a lot to do with it, but it was some planning objection to a golf course. ’
‘And was the golf course by any chance called Boho Golf & Spa House Club?’
‘Yes! That’s it!’ Sue took a swig of her drink and waved a finger at Pat. ‘How do you know about it?’
‘It’s right near me. I’ve met the developer, in fact. Terrible dog owner.’
‘Right near you? In your part of the Downs? Oh gosh, I didn’t realise.
I haven’t read the whole document, I didn’t know whereabouts it was, and obviously the objection was never filed.
It had something to do with bats and a barn.
You can’t build when they’re present, or something like that.
Do you remember the hundred-million-pound bat tunnel they built for HS2 that’s apparently not even bat-proof? !’
‘I do. Expensive.’
‘So is that development. Thirty or forty million, something like that. It’s a lot. I can show you the letter if you want, it’s on my computer at home.’
‘Thirty or forty, you say?’ Pat swirled the ice around in her glass.
‘Million. Thirty or forty million.’
She looked up. ‘People have died for much less.’
‘They most certainly have.’