Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

‘Follow-up?’ asked Guleed, meaning let’s go find Phoebe and put the frighteners on her, on the off-chance she might cough right there and then. It’s always a good tactic – turn up like a horrible surprise. But since she was seventeen we’d have to faff about getting her a responsible adult and everything, and that would take the edge off.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

Guleed bit her lip.

‘Let’s see if we can’t lean on Olivia a bit more first,’ she said. ‘If Phoebe was supplying the drugs, I wish we knew why Olivia is covering for her.’

‘Perhaps she doesn’t think there will be consequences,’ I said. ‘Maybe she thinks her mum’s going to get it sorted.’

Guleed sighed.

‘She’s a fool if she relies on that,’ she said.

‘Her mum seems to be doing quite a good job at the moment,’ I said.

‘When I was a little girl,’ said Guleed, ‘I lived in a great big house with marble floors and servants to clean them. I remember the marble floors because you could get a rug, do a run up and slide all the way down the hall and into the dining room. There was a garage with five cars including a beautiful bright green Mercedes and every morning my father would climb into the back of that Mercedes and be driven to work.’

Guleed tugged at her hijab, adjusting the fit slightly.

‘Then one morning my mother woke all us children up and bundled us into the back of that green Mercedes and my father drove us to the airport. The next day I woke up in a B&B off the Euston Road. There were seven of us in two rooms and the toilets smelled.’ She made a note in her daybook. ‘My father was somebody important right up to the day he was nobody at all,’ she said. ‘Power in the material world is fleeting.’

‘And yet you became a police officer,’ I said.

‘I said it was fleeting,’ said Guleed. ‘Not that it wasn’t important.’

‘So what did your dad do that was so important?’ I asked.

Guleed snapped her daybook shut. ‘Are we going to lean on Olivia or not?’

‘Just waiting on a location,’ I said, which was sort of true. ‘Where’s David?’

‘He’s out doing a recce on his target,’ said Guleed. ‘He managed to dig out floorplans on Zoopla, of all places, and now is checking to make sure he’ll have all the exits covered.’

‘Pays to be thorough,’ I said.

Guleed shrugged and I could see that she was going to push the Olivia issue again when I was saved by my phone ringing – it was Beverley.

‘You so owe me for this, babes,’ she said and gave me the details.

When she was finished I hung up and told Guleed. Who was not happy.

‘Just you?’ she said.

‘If you’re there, then it becomes sort of officially official,’ I said. ‘This might be our best chance to find out who supplied the drugs.’

‘And if it turns out to be Olivia Thames-MacAllister?’

‘Then at least we won’t be wasting our time looking for someone else.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m sitting outside while you’re in there.’

So, back to Mayfair where the constant flow of money keeps the streets clean and free of unsightly poor people. It was just as well one of us was staying in the car, because we couldn’t find a legal parking space.

‘Be careful,’ said Guleed as I got out.

‘Hey, if I’m not back in an hour,’ I said, ‘call the President.’

Lady Ty met me at her front door and for once she wasn’t wearing a suit. Instead she wore a pair of jeans and a loose green Arran jumper. Her hair was wrapped in a faded green and gold African print scarf which meant that either she was between hair conditionings or she was reverting under stress – neither was a good omen.

Her gaze flicked over to Guleed and then back to me.

‘I see you’ve left the secret policeman’s daughter in the car,’ she said.

‘Ty,’ I said, ‘you’re better at sarcasm than I am – I concede. Whatever. Can we just get this done?’

The idea that I was more reluctant to meet up than she was threw her off long enough for me to get inside the house, and we were back in the kitchen where the wheels had come off the first time. Olivia was waiting for us in the same seat as before, but there was no caution this time, plus two or otherwise. This was off the books – I was not here, this never happened – the spice must flow.

Since she was sitting, I stayed standing – so did her mum.

‘We know about Phoebe,’ I said.

A little jerk of the head as Olivia tried to hide her reaction, not helped by having her mum ask, ‘What about Phoebe?’

I looked at Lady Ty, but made sure I could still see Olivia’s reaction.

‘Your husband George drives a blue BMW?’ I said and quoted the licence number.

‘What about it?’ asked Lady Ty who had probably been planning to hold my feet to the fire but now had something else to worry about – thank god.

‘Do you know its current whereabouts?’

‘George has a space at the car park at Marble Arch,’ she said. ‘He always leaves it there when he’s away working.’

‘A car matching its description was used to buy the drugs that killed Christina Chorley,’ I said.

‘That’s not possible,’ said Lady Ty and strode across the kitchen to where a surprisingly unbranded clutch bag was sitting on the counter beside the microwave. From it she pulled a set of keys and dangled them at me. ‘There are only two sets of keys,’ she said. ‘George has the others.’

‘Then it must have been you who drove down south to buy drugs,’ I said.

‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘You know that’s absurd.’

‘I have a dealer who can identify your car and I can prove that it was in the right place at the right time – I’ve got the CCTV,’ I said. Which was a total lie. At best there was a fifty-fifty chance that should I spend five days tracking down cameras I might find one that had recorded the event. ‘If it wasn’t you, who was it?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Olivia from behind me. ‘It was me.’

‘Olivia can’t drive,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I offered to pay for lessons, but she can’t even be bothered to apply for a provisional licence.’

This I knew – just as I knew that Phoebe Beaumont-Jones had a brand spanking new driver’s licence, issued just a month previously. Obviously she was better motivated than our Olivia.

‘So it must be you,’ I said to Lady Ty, who raised an eyebrow in reply. I drew myself up and said in my most serious voice – ‘Cecelia Tyburn McAllister-Thames I—’ It’s a long name and I drew it out as much as I could, but you’ve got to wonder what might have happened had Olivia been made of sterner stuff.

‘Fine,’ said Olivia. ‘Fine, okay, I wasn’t alone.’

Lady Ty met my eyes before I turned to face her daughter, and her gaze was cool and ironic and terrifying.

‘Was it Phoebe?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Olivia.

‘Did she buy the drugs?’ I asked.

Olivia hesitated.

‘Did she?’ said her mother.

‘Yes.’

Lady Ty asked if buying the drugs had been Phoebe’s idea and, when Olivia hesitated again, asked the question again in a tone I recognised from my own mum. The one that says: Yes there’s going to be trouble, but that is as nothing to the trouble you are about to be in if you continue to cross me.

‘Yes,’ said Olivia. It had been Phoebe’s idea because Phoebe was fun and exciting and didn’t spend her whole life trying to conform to other people’s expectations. Phoebe was a rebel.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Ty. ‘She’s a rebel, good for her. And you’re planning to go to prison on her behalf why?’

‘You forget I’ve seen you at work,’ said Olivia. ‘I knew you’d get me out of it.’