Майкл Ридпат - Fatal Error

We left the café to head back to Baker Street tube. As we paused to cross the road, Ingrid turned to check for traffic and grabbed my arm.

‘My God!’

‘What?’

‘Look!’

I looked. About twenty yards behind us a large figure in a Ninetyminutes T-shirt and baseball cap was shambling along the pavement towards us. Owen.

He stopped and stared at us, his face devoid of expression. A cab with its light on was approaching us along the Marylebone Road. I thrust out my arm and the taxi screeched to a halt. I bundled Ingrid inside.

I turned to look for Owen.

He was gone.

Anne Glazier was a small, harried woman of about thirty wearing an English suit and a Hermès scarf. The rapid clack of her heels on the hard stone floor echoed around the cavernous foyer of Coward Turner’s new building as she approached me, bulging briefcase weighing her down on one side. We perched uncomfortably on the leather-clad slabs that were supposed to act as seats for the big law firm’s visitors.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.

‘Not at all,’ she answered briskly. ‘A murder is important.’

‘It is indeed.’

‘I take it the police haven’t discovered who killed Tony Jourdan?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You know they spoke to me at length?’

‘Yes, yes, I know. But as I told you on the phone, I’m Guy Jourdan’s partner. The uncertainty over the whole affair is damaging our business, so I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened myself. I wanted to talk to you in person: I’m sure you know how important it is to get the details right.’

She frowned for a moment, but then nodded. She looked like the sort of woman who spent a lot of time getting the details right.

‘Can you tell me what happened that evening?’

‘All right. Mel’s an old friend from Manchester. We studied law together. Every now and then when I visit London I stay on an extra night with her. She does the same in Paris. We see each other perhaps a couple of times a year. Anyway, that afternoon I went to her office to pick up her key. She told me she’d meet me at her flat later. She also said her boyfriend might be there.’

I picked up a note of distaste in Anne’s voice. ‘You weren’t happy about that?’

‘Not exactly. Especially when I heard who it was. I remembered Guy from several years ago. He wasn’t good news. I know he’s a friend of yours, but I’m sure you understand what I mean.’

I nodded. I did.

‘Also, I wanted to spend the evening with Mel myself. I mean, that’s why I was staying with her. But Mel was so excited it was embarrassing. You know her, she usually seems so cool. Apparently, Guy had stayed with her the night before and she was clearly convinced this was going to be the beginning of something serious.’

From her tone, Anne was less convinced.

‘So you were in Mel’s flat all evening?’

‘Yes. From about seven o’clock onwards. I dumped my stuff there that afternoon and went for a walk. I got back about seven.’

‘And then Guy showed up?’

‘Yes.’

‘At what time?’

‘I can’t remember exactly. I did tell the police. It was quite late.’

My interest quickened. ‘So you’re not sure when it was?’

‘Not now. It’s six months ago, isn’t it? But I was sure then. I gave them a precise time.’

‘Nine thirty?’ I said, remembering my conversation with Spedding.

‘That sounds right.’

‘How could you be so precise?’

Anne’s eyebrows knitted together as though she didn’t like the implication that she was ever anything but precise.

‘I was watching the clock. Mel wasn’t back from work. I was annoyed. As I said earlier, the whole point of this was to see her. I thought we’d go out to dinner or something.’

‘So she wasn’t there when Guy showed up?’

‘No. I let him in.’

‘How was he?’

‘Drunk. Not just drunk. He was in a state. He looked manic. He didn’t say anything to me, just, “Hello,” and “Where’s Mel?”. He searched the flat for alcohol, found a bottle of wine, opened it and slumped on the sofa to wait for her.’

‘What happened when Mel came back?’

‘She wasn’t much better. I mean, she did have a few words with me, but she was all over Guy. Comforting him, pouring him more drink. She ignored me! I left them to it and shut myself in my room. I was on my way to the airport when Mel called me on my mobile to say that Guy’s father had been killed. She said the police would want to speak to me.’

‘Do you know what Mel and Guy talked about?’

‘No. They didn’t want me to hear.’

‘Could it have been about Tony Jourdan’s death?’

‘No. They didn’t know about it then.’ Anne looked me straight in the eye. ‘As you can tell, Guy Jourdan is not my favourite person, and to be frank neither is Mel when she’s with him, but nothing he said or did suggested he was plotting to kill his father. And according to the police, it would be impossible anyway, given the time he arrived at Mel’s flat.’

‘That’s true,’ I said.

‘I hope I’ve been some help,’ Anne said, looking at her watch. ‘Now I really must go upstairs to get ready for my meeting.’

I watched her march to the bank of lifts, her heels rapping her progress on the hard floor, and thought about what she had said.

It was looking increasingly unlikely that Guy could have killed his father. He didn’t have the time to do it himself, and Sergeant Spedding’s conviction that Tony’s death was not the work of a professional effectively ruled out the possibility that Guy had hired someone else to do it.

That, at least, was good to know. Or it should have been. But my feelings about Guy were becoming more confused, not less, especially after the way he had accused me of betraying him and tried to take my stake in Ninetyminutes away from me. Was he the friend I had always assumed he was? Or was he someone else entirely? Had I really wasted the last year of my life and ruined my career by following him?

And if neither Guy nor Owen had killed Tony Jourdan, who the hell had?

I was wary of letting Ingrid go back to Ninetyminutes now Owen had seen us together, but she was determined to do it. She wanted to see what was going on.

What was going on was that Guy was desperately trying to get Mercia Metro TV interested in Ninetyminutes. He took Ingrid, Gaz, Amy and Mel along with him to Birmingham on Wednesday. According to Ingrid, he put on a good performance and she had no doubt he caught Mercia Metro’s interest. He persuaded two of the senior people to come down to Britton Street the following day, although they weren’t confident that they would be able to put in an unconditional offer by the midnight deadline.

Nothing from Owen. Ingrid said he was in the office, but he gave no indication that he’d seen the two of us together the day before. Not that that meant anything. I was worried about her. Guy had his back to the wall. Whenever that had happened in the past, someone had got hurt. This time I prayed it wouldn’t be Ingrid.

I spent the next day, Thursday, the day of the deadline, at home climbing the walls. Ingrid called at eight o’clock that evening.

‘I’m leaving now.’

‘You’re what? I thought you’d be staying till midnight. Has Guy given up?’

‘No. But he’s sent us all home.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll explain.’

She did, when I saw her half an hour later.

‘The Mercia Metro TV team came down this morning: the Managing Director and the Finance Director. Guy showed them around the office and there’s no doubt they were keen. All kinds of talk about synergies, and internet space and all that mumbo-jumbo. But then we sat round the table to talk about the deal. They didn’t seem to think there was much chance of coming up with an unconditional offer. They’d have to do their own due diligence, get an accountant’s investigation, convene a board meeting and God knows what.