She blew a stream of smoke into the air and watched it ripple towards the ceiling. "That's right," she said evenly.
"But he preferred your friend Meg Harris and left you for her."
She smiled slightly. "Right again, Inspector."
"So perhaps Miss Harris is embarrassed to phone you," he suggested, "despite your insistence in your message that you don't bear grudges."
She tapped ash into the ashtray. "To tell you the truth," she said slowly, "I can't really remember what I said." She looked at him with an inquiring expression in her dark eyes. "You talked about political incorrectness, said you ought to be ripping her first editions to pieces, told her you'd lost your memory after driving at a concrete post, and asked her to phone you here if she could stand the embarrassment of talking to you. Does that ring any bells?"
"Only alarm ones," she murmured. "You were very precise in your introductory spiel. You said that Hammersmith police had listened to her messages, taken down this phone number, and then asked you to contact me here for her parents' address. You made no mention of listening to the tape yourself." She pressed the palm of her hand against the side of her head where a pain was beginning. "So either you were there when they listened, or they made a copy which they sent on to you."
"They faxed us a transcript," said Maddocks. "Why does that alarm you?"
"May I see the fax?"
He glanced at Fraser again. "Did we bring it with us, Sergeant? The last time I saw it, it was on your desk."
The young man shook his head. "Sorry, Gov. I didn't think we'd need it." He turned to prop his notebook against the wall, hoping that his anger and unease were less obvious than they felt.
Jinx watched him for a moment. He was a poor liar, she thought, but then his complexion was against him. He was fair, like Fergus, and the blood ran too easily to his face. She felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He had a bully for a boss and she knew better than anyone that it took a peculiar kind of courage to stand up to bullies. "As a matter of interest," she said calmly, "why didn't you phone Meg's business number and ask Josh these questions?"
"Because Hammersmith have been unable to locate it," said Maddocks. "As I explained at the beginning, she appears to be in the process of moving out. According to them, there's nothing left except a few first editions, some clothes, and the cat."
She turned to Fraser. "So who's looking after Marmaduke?"
"The neighbor, Mrs. Helms," he answered obligingly.
There was a long silence.
"What exactly has happened to Meg?" asked Jinx quietly. "I can't believe that Winchester CID would go all the way to London to search someone's flat just because her credit cards have been stolen."
Maddocks, controlling an urge to show Fraser what a pillock he thought him, perched instead on the edge of Jinx's bed and leaned forward, hands clamped between his knees. "It wasn't only hers that were stolen," he admitted gravely, "but Mr. Wallader's as well. The registered address for his cards is Twelve Glenavon Gardens, Richmond, which was already in the Hampshire police file as a result of your accident. Richmond police were able to give us the address and telephone number of Leo's parents because they retrieved that information from your house following the crash. However, when we contacted Sir Anthony to discover where Leo and Meg have gone, he couldn't tell us anything. And that worried us, because we couldn't understand why neither of them had notified the credit companies that their cards had been stolen. If they're in a cottage in Brittany, then perhaps that explains it, but I don't understand why Sir Anthony couldn't give us the address."
She drew away from him into the back of her chair and tried to control the panic in her heart. Something else had happened ... something so terrible that she was too frightened to search her memory for it... "He doesn't know it," she said in an uneven voice which came back to her through the thudding, racing blood in her ears. "He knows very little about his son. Philippa, too."
Maddocks's heavy face drew closer, his shrewd little eyes fixed on hers. "Are you all right, Miss Kingsley?"
"Yes, thank you." Something else had happened ... Forget ... forget ... FORGET! "As far as they're concerned," she went on more steadily, "his only capital assets are a few stocks and shares, when in fact he has the cottage in Brittany, a house in London, which he rents out to anyone who can afford it, and a condominium in Florida. There could be a great deal more, for all I know. Those are the three he told me about."
"Do you know the address of the London house?"
They'd had a row ... Anthony and Philippa had been there ... I want to marry Meg ... Meg's a whore ... She flicked her gaze back to Maddocks's face. "Only that it's in Chelsea somewhere," she said, licking her lips nervously. "His solicitor could tell you. His name's Maurice Bloom and he has an office somewhere off Fleet Street. I'm sure you can find him through the Law Society."
Maddocks checked to see that Fraser had taken down the name. "Is there a good reason why he doesn't want his parents to know about his properties?" he asked her.
She thought about that. ' 'It depends on your definition of good. Yes, he has a reason, and personally, I think it stinks, but it makes sense to Leo." She paused. "I can't really tell you what it is without sounding bitter."
"I think we need to know," said the Inspector.
Did they? She was finding it hard to concentrate. I said goodbye to Leo at breakfast ... we're getting married on the second of July... "They're a type, not Philippa so much perhaps, but Anthony and Leo certainly." Her voice sounded strangely remote again. "You never pay for anything if you can get someone else to pay for you, you use other people's expertise to help you up the ladder, and you plead poverty all the time while making snide remarks about how wealthy everyone else is. It becomes very wearing very quickly for the person who's being bled, particularly when you know that the parasite you're supporting is rolling in it." Was she mad? These were the last people who should be hearing her confession. Talk to the doctor... he wants your stay here to be comfortable ... it's a free choice...
Maddocks watched her eyes grow huge in a face made tiny by her lack of hair. He felt the pull of their attraction even while he was thinking: Got you, you murdering bitch. You really hated the poor bastard. "And Leo did this to you?" he asked gently.
"Not immediately. He wasn't so crass. Actually, he was quite generous at the beginning. It was only when he moved into Glenavon Gardens that I realized what I'd saddled myself with." She took deep breaths.
"There's no hurry, Miss Kingsley. Take your time."
Memories of Russell's murder flooded her mind. Take your time ... there's no hurry ... We know your father hated him enough to kill him ... we know your father's a psychopath... "He's a believer in the what's-yours-is-mine principle," she said in a rush to drown out the voices in her head, "but without the reciprocity. He was just as secretive with me as he was with his parents. I only found out about his properties when Maurice Bloom phoned him at my house one day, and it was clear from his end of the conversation that he owned something in Florida. I was angry enough to make him tell me about it, because he had given me the impression he was in financial difficulties." So much so, that, like Fergus, he had borrowed money from her handbag. God, she remembered now. It was the meanness that had finally got to her, the tax dodges, the obsessive secrecy surrounding his bank and credit card statements, the me-me-me of his lifestyle.
"What sort of job did he have?"
She noted the past tense but let it pass. "He called himself a stockbroker but, as he never mentioned clients by name, I guessed he was playing the markets for himself."