Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

As soon as Aiden Burghley had mentioned the blue BMW, there’d been a little tickle in my brain. And when I logged into HOLMES and a did a word search through the Marigold nominals there it was – a blue 63 reg BMW X5 registered to George Thames-McAllister. On the off-chance I ran an ANPR sweep on Bromley and there was the right BMW, tooling down the A21 towards the town centre and then back again. Exactly the right time window for Aiden Burghley to sell its occupant some MDMA.

I hesitated before I added this to HOLMES – I didn’t want to firm up the case against Lady Ty’s wayward daughter, but the whole point of a collation system is that you feed in information to collate. Still, with her mother’s influence putting the brakes on the investigation I figured that Olivia was safe for the moment. With a bit of luck that would give me time to sort things out using the time-honoured tradition of exploiting family connections.

In days of old, a stout yeoman would set out from Aldgate along the road to Colchester in the full knowledge that just a mile up the road was a small hamlet where he could stop for a pint and a cheeky pie. This rest stop was called Mile End from Le Mille End which is your Norman French for a hamlet a mile up the road. The road from Aldersgate was called Aldgatestrete and then, because that was considered too on the nose, the Mile End Road. It’s where young Richard II signed the peasants’ charter with his fingers crossed behind his back and the first ever V1 cruise missile to land in London hit. It’s also where Queen Mary University teaches Environmental Science, so it was there that I had lunch with Beverley Brook.

Now, just up the road are some of the best curry houses in London. But no. Bev, who’s gone all outdoorsy since Herefordshire, wanted to go picnic up on the Green Bridge. This is a foot and cycle bridge that crosses the Mile End Road linking the two halves of Mile End Park. Since the bridge was constructed this side of the year 2000 it has a ton of retail space built into its base and one of these places was called Rooster Piri Piri, where you can get a reasonably priced double chicken burger and chips. Even if me and Beverley both agreed that their extra hot Piri Piri sauce was a bit mild by our standards.

We found ourselves queuing behind a bunch of young men with matching beards and black framed Malcolm X glasses who were making a complicated bulk order. Their fathers might have been from Bangladesh or Pakistan, but their accents ranged from local London to Glasgow with, I noticed, a side trip to France on the way.

‘Engineering students,’ said Beverley as they argued about how to divide up the bill.

Once they’d finished constructing their order we got ours and took it up the steps to the bridge and then across to where there was a decent bench and, importantly, we couldn’t see the Grand Union Canal.

‘It’s bad manners for me to sit too close to the canal,’ said Beverley, ‘without asking Mrs Canal’s permission.’ Which Beverley reckoned was more trouble than it was worth, given that she didn’t think it was that scenic a canal.

‘There are swamps with a better flow rate than hers,’ said Beverley.

Now, I’ve met the Goddess of the Grand Union Canal. And she’s perfectly nice, you know, providing you bring her a banana – preferably free trade.

So once we’d stopped fighting over the remaining chips I asked Bev whether she could maybe see her way to facilitate an off the record meeting with her sister.

‘Can’t you just go around and talk to her?’ asked Beverley.

‘Even if I make an unofficial visit,’ I said, ‘she won’t talk to me without her brief present.’

If she’s sensible, I thought, which she is.

‘I am not getting involved in this,’ said Beverley.

‘I’m not asking you to get involved,’ I said.

‘Yes you are.’

‘Okay, yes I am.’

‘And I’m not going to get involved.’

‘Olivia’s your niece,’ I said. ‘And she’s sleepwalking her way into a serious drugs charge.’

‘And Tyburn is my sister,’ said Beverley. ‘My older sister, and she holds grudges forever. And I mean forever. Besides, it’ll never get to that – Tyburn will fix it.’

‘And how will she do that?’

‘If it comes to it you know she’s going to march to Fed HQ and tell your boss to lay off – who’s going to stop her?’

‘I’m going to stop her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s my job – that’s what the Folly is about.’

‘No,’ said Beverley. ‘That’s what you’ve decided the Folly is about. I wonder if the Nightingale thinks the same as you do.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘Really?’ asked Beverley. ‘You can’t let this case go – not even for a quiet life?’

There was a long pause while Beverley looked me right in the eye and I was suddenly worried that she was going to ask me to cease and desist as a personal favour to her. And if she did, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. But then she shook her head and waved her burger at me.

‘Alright, I’ll do it. But it’s going to cost you,’ she said.

‘What is it this time?’

‘Maksim’s putting in some baffles where I run across the common,’ she said. Maksim was the administrator and sole employee of the Beverley Brook Conservation Improvement Trust. He was also a terrifying former Russian mobster who’d come into Beverley’s ‘service’ via a complicated and morally ambiguous route. ‘He needs a hand.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘As long as you come and watch.’

Beverley grinned. ‘You know I like it when you do improvements,’ she said.

I know she liked to get me in the water with my clothes on – I blame Colin Firth for that.

I had a sudden brainwave while driving back west, so when I got to Belgravia I hunted down Guleed, who was typing up that morning’s statements from St Paul’s school for girls with rich parents. I showed her the picture I’d taken of the collage on Olivia’s wall, with the young curly haired woman who had cropped up so frequently.

‘Spot this one?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Guleed and checked her notebook. ‘Phoebe Beaumont-Jones – shared a couple of classes with your Olivia.’

I thought of the picture of them standing together in France, arms comfortably around each other’s waists.

‘Not best friends?’ I asked.

‘Nobody said anything,’ said Guleed. ‘Least of all Phoebe herself.’

‘They definitely look like friends in the picture,’ I said.

‘Do you think she was at the party?’ asked Guleed.

None of the witnesses had identified her, but if she was Olivia’s friend rather than theirs they might have overlooked her. Or were they scared of Olivia, or of Phoebe Beaumont-Jones?

You can’t go by appearances – I once helped put away a gang of steamers who’d been working Oxford Street at the behest of an OAP with a dodgy hip and pipe cleaner arms. They were so terrified of him that not one of the gang would grass him up. I asked one of them why – off the record – and he told me that the geezer had no off switch, and once he started in that was it. You were dead meat.

It was just possible that her fellow Paulinas feared to mention Phoebe. Was she the one who supplied the drugs?

I looked at Guleed, who was obviously thinking the same thing.

So we called up Bromley and sent them Phoebe’s picture to show to Aiden Burghley.

Less than an hour of paperwork later, Bromley called back and said that it was just possible that Phoebe might be the young woman he’d sold the drugs to – maybe. We passed Phoebe’s details on, but asked Bromley to let us know before they took any action.