14
The next day, Jonas was in the office bright and early and had barely settled down to work when his intercom buzzed, and he was informed that his security chief wanted a word.
The businessman felt a slight quiver of alarm ripple through him, and he silently cursed Elizabeth Grainger and Lyssa Moore.
Although he was reasonably sure that their threat to him was negligible, the fact that every time Ian Gorman now asked to see him made him feel uneasy was enough to rouse his temper.
Damn it, why couldn’t life get back to the smooth running of before? He resented, bitterly, being made to feel unsettled like this all the time.
‘Tell him to come in,’ he said gruffly into the speaker, then sat back and watched as the former soldier, walking neatly and swiftly – as was his habit – came to stand before the desk.
‘Just to let you know. My people have now been able to go through the contents of the Moore woman’s laptop, and it doesn’t contain any nasty surprises.
As you know, we were able to tap into her phone conversations almost right away, even before we had to visit the flat, and so far she seems to be doing nothing more than tracking down the people involved in Amelia Montrose’s life and times – or their relatives, since most of the people concerned are now dead and gone.
In some cases, long gone. A case in point .
. .’ He paused to consult his notebook. ‘She telephoned a Mr Jack Flynn. It seems he’s a relative of Deborah Simmonds, who . . .’
‘He’s what?’ Jonas yelped, surprising his usually imperturbable security chief considerably by jumping to his feet and turning very pale.
Ian Gorman regarded his employer thoughtfully for a moment. ‘I take it that’s a significant development – and not a very welcome one?’
‘Of course it is! What passed between them? Tell me exactly.’
Ian Gorman pulled up the transcript of the telephone conversation between Mrs Moore and Jack Flynn and read it back verbatim.
As he did so, Jonas sank down on to his chair, sweating profusely.
When Gorman had finished speaking, he took an unsteady breath.
‘I want you to track down this Flynn man at once and find out where he lives. Then I want a search made of both his place and that of his dead mother – have your men remove any old papers and documents, no matter what they are.’
‘Anything else, sir?’
‘Yes, find out all you can about Jack Flynn. His circumstances, his background, anything.’
The security chief nodded. ‘Am I looking for anything in particular?’
‘Anything we can use again him, if need be,’ Jonas said bitterly. And added softly, ‘I’m almost sure she wouldn’t have kept anything . . . she wasn’t stupid. But you never know . . . Dad never trusted her . . .’
‘Sir?’
Aware that he was mumbling, Jonas shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just do what I said – as fast as you can.’
Without another word, the former soldier departed.
In her apartment, Lyssa was up and dressed, and busily transcribing her notes. She was interrupted by a phone call not quite half an hour into the task.
Absently she reached for it and answered. She recognised a broad Scottish accent at once and assumed it belonged to Alison Jameson’s nephew.
‘Hello, Mrs Moore? You spoke before to Nanna, when she agreed to look up Grand-da’s files for yer book?’
‘Hello, yes, thanks for keeping in touch. How’s it going?’
‘That’s why I’m calling. Nanna wants to talk to yez, if you’ve a laptop handy?’
‘I certainly do,’ she said eagerly, quickly saving her notes, and then calling up the menu.
‘Fine – I’m setting it up now. What would we do wi’hout Zoom, eh?’ he muttered, as over the line Lyssa could hear him busily tapping on keys.
Within minutes all the necessary data was shared, and she and Alison Jameson were looking at one another on the screen. Lyssa saw a small woman with a white cap of hair and sparkling brown eyes in a very wrinkled but pleasant face.
‘Lyssa, is it? So nice to meet you in person – well, almost,’ the woman said. Her accent wasn’t so broadly Scottish as her nephew’s.
‘Hello, Alison, and thank you so much for helping me,’ Lyssa began, with a friendly smile.
‘Oh, it was nae trouble. I love talking about Derek anytime, even now, and it’s brought back a lot of good memories.
After I heard you were writing a book about that poor lassie that died in her pond, I got to thinking back.
It was a big case, right enough, and one of Derek’s most famous, and I remember him talking about it all the time – once the coroner’s verdict had been returned.
He was tight-lipped about it before then, mind.
Well, as you can imagine, him being in the police and everything. ’
‘That sounds hopeful from my point of view,’ Lyssa said with another encouraging smile. ‘I’m hoping against hope that you found something about it in his papers, then?’
‘Oh aye, quite a bit, in fact,’ Alison said, making Lyssa’s happy heart skip in her chest. ‘He kept his own file – nothing official, of course, that’s against the rules, ye ken.
But his old notebooks are still there, and some of his own jotted-down thoughts.
I can let you have anything you need – my nephew tells me I can just swipe some little gadget or other over the papers and send them through the ether to your gadget. Hold on a mo . . .’
She leaned to one side, and another face loomed into view – that of a middle-aged, freckle-faced man with a mop of unruly sandy-coloured hair. ‘Hello there – do yez have an email address?’
Lyssa sent it to him, and after a moment, a ping sounded on her smartphone. ‘Sounds like they arrived OK,’ she said, giving him a thumbs-up. ‘I’ll download them and read them right away. But I was wondering if you had read them, Alison?’
‘Well o’ course I did, lassie,’ Alison said with a broad grin. ‘Curious as a cat, that’s me.’
‘What did you make of them?’ she asked. Although she now had the copies of his notes, Alison had been married to Derek and he must have spoken to her freely about the case – more so than he would have bothered writing down.
And a good researcher never missed the opportunity to get someone’s take on things who had been there on the spot.
‘Oh, it brought it all back,’ Alison said at once.
‘One of his constables actually fished the poor lassie out of the water. As you probably already know, she was found by a young couple at the party who’d wandered out for a bit of a smooch, Derek always reckoned.
And neither one of them thought to wade in and bring her to shore.
I thought that was rather callous, but Derek said at least they didn’t disturb any evidence. ’
‘Was there much?’
‘Nae, no’ really. He said there were nae signs of a struggle at the pond’s edge.
No footprints, nothing tangible like. Which seemed to support the theory it wuz an accident.
They found an empty glass that had contained champagne or somethin’ on the paving stones around the pond, which is why they thought she’d been drunk and probably just toppled in, like. ’
‘So, he never had any doubts about the verdict, then?’ Lyssa said, feeling relieved. The thought of accidently crossing the trail of a killer had been giving her the heebie-jeebies, so she was glad to be able to put the possibility to one side once and for all.
But it was at this point that the old woman very visibly hesitated.
‘Well, yez and nae,’ she said, stringing the words out and making Lyssa’s spirits drop.
‘He said all the evidence that there was pointed to an accident, or maybe a suicide. But . . . he always told me that the case left him feeling a bit antsy.’
Lyssa bit back a sigh and, worried that the other woman might pick up on her tension, tried to keep everything sounding very casual. ‘Oh? Antsy how?’
‘He just didnae like the feel o’ it, he said,’ Alison responded with a small shrug. ‘You know how it is, when something just feels off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it?’
Lyssa gave a rather rueful smile. ‘Yes, I know the feeling. Was that all it was, or did something in particular worry him?’ she pressed.
On the screen, Alison frowned slightly, making her wrinkles multiply. ‘Well, he thought there wuz a lot o’ people at that party who didn’t like her for one thing. And he didn’t like that.’
‘You mean the Bannisters – Glen’s parents?’ Lyssa clarified.
‘Aye, them for a start. They were all set to sue her in the courts for their son’s money at the time.
Can’t say as I blamed them for that though, neither did Derek, although he had to stay impartial.
It seemed so unfair that a rich woman should get richer, when that young lad’s working-class parents were left with nothing.
After all, they raised him, and that’s nae cheap. ’
‘Did he suspect them of taking more drastic action against Monty, then?’ Lyssa asked, again careful to keep her voice light.
‘Nae,’ Alison said cautiously, elongating the word thoughtfully.
‘I would nae say that. Don’t forget, that chap with the camera was making a film of everything, and he caught Monty steppin’ out into the garden, and Derek went over that reel of film frame by frame.
He was sure the Bannisters didn’t leave the party at all.
Plus, he said from the witness statements that they were talking tae someone practically the whole time.
Either that, or they wuz at the bar – the booze was free,’ she added wryly. ‘And plenty of it, according to Derek.’
Lyssa nodded slowly. ‘In that case, I’m surprised he was so wary about accepting the accidental verdict.’
‘Aye, well, the Bannisters were nae the only ones to have a bone to pick with the poor lassie – there were the others in the band to consider as well. He asked around, ye ken, and found out that there were serious ructions between the band and the dead lassie.’
‘Yes, I know about those,’ Lyssa admitted.
‘And not all of the band members were in sight of the party cameraman all the time.’