12
In Osney Mead, Ian Gorman glanced up at the elegant, white block of flats and checked his watch. His men had been inside for nearly twenty minutes, but he wasn’t concerned. He knew that to do a thorough job took time.
He’d never been to Oxford before, and the beauty of the university city wasn’t lost on him, but what he liked about it most of all was that this pleasant, leafy suburb was set in a quiet backwater, overlooking the river, and foot traffic was light.
It was a sunshine-and-cloudy day, and right now the clouds had covered the sun, and hardly anybody was in sight.
He’d had his man park the car with the front door of the small block of flats in plain sight, and nobody had yet gone in or come out of the building – save for his men.
This did not surprise him, since he imagined that the majority of the people who lived here were well-off professionals who were out at work all day, busy earning the mortgage payments.
In fact, he was willing to bet that there was a good chance that his two men were currently the only inhabitants of the building.
He’d have lost that bet, however, for there was someone else in the building, and right now, he was standing a little to one side of the blinds covering his main window, and was watching Ian’s car with cool, assessing eyes.
Neville Rickman lowered the small but powerful pair of binoculars from his eyes and jotted down the number plate of the car, as well as its make, colour and any other details that stood out. He was sure there was someone sitting in the back of the car, but he’d yet to get a good look at him.
He moved swiftly from his post by the window and moved to his front door. His ears had just detected a slight sound from the hall outside, and now he pressed his head to the wood, then slowly, carefully, inched the door open.
He was just in time to see two men slip out of the building’s entrance, and he raced back to his position by the window and snatched up a camera with a telephoto lens attached to it. He drew a couple of the blinds apart and snapped away.
As he suspected, the two men made their way straight to the parked car, one getting behind the wheel, the other slipping smoothly into the back. When each man turned to open the door and get in, Neville got a good picture of their faces.
The car pulled smoothly away and disappeared.
Neville nodded grimly. Yes. It was as he’d thought. Someone else was taking an interest in Lyssa Moore and – unless he missed his guess – had just been in her flat.
On the train home, Lyssa was feeling quite pleased with how things had gone. She resisted the urge to listen back to the recording with Jonas Bannister, knowing that she’d have to transcribe it all in detail later, but instead reviewed what she needed to do next.
In the searches she’d done yesterday, she’d managed to get the contact details for Alison Jameson, the widow of the police officer who’d handled Monty’s case.
She’d been lucky enough to find Mrs Jameson at her first attempt at phoning her, and she was happy to cooperate with the book as it meant that her husband’s name would live on, in some small way.
She lived up in Scotland, however, so they’d agreed that a Zoom call was in order.
Alison had been sure that she’d find something of interest in her husband’s ‘archives’ which she’d consigned to the attic years ago, and once she’d managed to lure a handy nephew over to help her get the boxes down, she would arrange the call.
Again, with the help of the long-suffering nephew, who ‘knew all about that sort of thing’ as she ‘didn’t do computers and stuff’.
So Lyssa would have to check to see if Alison had left any messages, although it was probably far too early for that yet.
Lyssa had struck lucky again in that she had managed to find a direct descendent of Deborah Simmonds, Monty’s charity co-worker – a great-grandson named Jack Flynn.
Alas, her luck ran out at that point, for she hadn’t yet got him to answer his phone; however, she’d messaged and texted him, and although she’d had no response so far, she was not about to give up.
She’d just have to keep ringing and texting him and hope that pester-power would eventually get him to respond.
Of course, once he did, she knew that it might prove to be a somewhat tricky conversation, for she couldn’t expect him to be very happy if he twigged, by her line of questioning, that she suspected his relative of pinching charity funds!
Which meant that she’d have to choose her words very carefully and be very subtle.
She was still debating whether it would be better to try and arrange to speak to Jack Flynn in person (which meant that she could gauge his body language) or play it light and breezy over a ‘chatty’ phone call when she boarded the double-decker bus at the train station.
Swiping her phone over the pay point, she decided to cross that bridge when she came to it and went upstairs for a seat with a view.
Making a mental note to pass on these troubling developments to Elizabeth when next they spoke, she forced herself to settle down. Speculation was very exciting and all that, but it was steady, hard graft that got the job done. Right now, she needed to focus on her research.
In Osney, she got off at her nearest stop and walked home, feeling pleasantly weary.
She again ignored the stairs (she was going to have to watch that – it could become a habit!) and took the lift to her flat.
Once inside, she kicked off her shoes luxuriously and then slung her tote bag with a sigh of relief on to the sofa.
Thus unburdened and liberated, she made her way automatically to the kitchen area and switched on the ever waiting and obliging coffee machine.
She was just returning to the sofa with her now full coffee mug in hand when she froze in place.
She stared hard at the photograph of Kyle.
Which wasn’t quite where it should have been.
‘Are you sure you didn’t move it when you were dusting or something and just didn’t notice?’ Freida asked her anxiously, three quarters of an hour later.
Being her own boss, Freida could take off from her office whenever she wanted to, and after getting Lyssa’s strained phone call, hadn’t hesitated to head right over.
‘No,’ Lyssa told her now flatly. ‘I always keep his photograph in exactly the same place – you know that. It’s where the light catches it best – not too near the front where I might accidentally snag it with my elbow when moving past, and not right up against the back of the wall either, where the shadow of the vase might obscure it.
I’m telling you – it’s definitely been moved.
And Bibbie doesn’t jump up here, he knows it’s off-limits, and he’s always been good about it.
It’s as if he knows the things on here are precious to me. ’
Freida glanced at her friend, not liking how pale and strained she looked. ‘OK,’ she said, inclined to take her at her word, for she knew how obsessive Lyssa tended to be over things relating to Kyle. Which was perhaps not so surprising, under the circumstances.
Kyle had been one of those fit, athletic young men that you thought would live forever – always careful about what he ate, he’d hardly been to the doctor a day in his life.
Freida had always found him to be rather aloof in many ways – the kind of man who didn’t like you to get close to him.
She often wondered if he had an inferiority complex or something, and was thus constantly afraid that people might start thinking he was a fraud; that although he was physically big and strong, and had built up a good business for himself, he was somehow inadequate.
She often dropped it into their conversations that everyone suffered from anxieties and worries, and nobody was perfect.
But she continued to feel that he was guarded about what he said and did, except, she presumed, with Lyssa.
And then, one day, he’d simply dropped dead on the street on his way to do a fitness programme with one of his private clients.
People had rushed to his aid, a passerby who knew CPR had even worked on him, and an ambulance had arrived in short time.
But he was dead on arrival at the hospital, and a subsequent post-mortem had found a hitherto unsuspected heart condition – and that was that.
He might have gone at any time, they’d explained sadly. Which didn’t alter the simple fact that he was gone now, and without any warning whatsoever.
Lyssa had been initially numb with shock, then distraught and grief-stricken, and then had gone around in a daze for months. Even now, Freida knew, her friend was not yet quite back on an even keel.
Lyssa cocked her head a little to one side and gave her friend a dry smile.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she chided softly.
‘You think I’ve finally lost the plot. But that’s not the only thing.
Once I noticed Kyle’s picture was out of place, I’ve now done a complete tour of all the rooms in the flat.
And it’s not the only thing that’s not quite right. ’
Freida put up a finger. ‘Just a sec – I want to see if the boys are in.’ So saying, she got up and went out, quickly returning with Carter and Jason. Carter looked concerned, Jason intrigued.
‘What’s all this?’ Jason demanded, looking around ostentatiously. ‘Have you been burgled? We only just got back ten minutes ago, but we didn’t see anyone suspicious lurking about, did we?’ He looked at the American for confirmation.