The art of murder, p.28
The Art of Murder, page 28
The song made Juno think about Oscar Davis’s stalker Marian Newbolt and wonder if she really was on a cruise. She could easily be the one in the ski mask, intent on finishing off the man she saw as an obstacle between her and Oscar.
Or could it have been Oscar himself, after all?
Phoebe had seen the car the masked intruder had used, a boxy black SUV. Oscar drove a Mercedes Benz Vito which fitted the description, although having ‘Davis and Locke Antiques’ painted on the side was hardly inconspicuous.
There was another detail Phoebe had mentioned about the car that eluded Juno; something about the couple she’d thought were having kinky sex in it, although they’d now concluded it was just one person inside, wresting their way out of a jumpsuit. Trying to remember what it was, she cursed her middle-aged brain fog once more.
Sukey was breaking the speed limit along the Ridgeway Road, rattling over the chalk Downs past the obelisk war memorial at its crest before plunging down into the Dunnett Valley.
As Juno’s stomach skipped up with g-force, ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ took over the airways and she felt lovelorn again, no longer trying to remember the kinky sex detail. Remembering what sex felt like was enough of a challenge, she reflected wistfully.
Phoebe
Chelsea teased Phoebe with its sexy, iconic familiarity when they drove along the Embankment. She played eenie-meenie with the bridges, eyed the big houses and landmarks like a fan gazing at her pin-ups, remembering the sheer buzz of living in London.
The Lockes’ Cheyne Walk house was tall and narrow, guarded by metal rails, geometric topiary and a host of high-tech buzzers, security cameras and intercoms.
Thea and Xanthe were both in their forties, taut with Botox, fillers and tension, a matched pair of smoothly glazed, caramel-tanned figures in camel cashmere, so difficult to tell apart they reminded Phoebe of a two-headed snake. Both still patently lusted after Felix, eyeing Phoebe’s vintage Vivienne Westwood and lived-in wrinkles with shocked distaste.
Inside the house, there was very little art at all. A few understated pieces, but far more space to gaze into than things to look at.
‘Everything about this place is unrecognisable,’ Felix said lightly, and Phoebe wondered if he was including the Locke sisters in the observation.
Xanthe now lived here when she was in London, she explained in a deep monotone purr. It belonged to the Locke Collection, of which she and Thea were trustees. ‘After Dad died, Mum sold off the Hampstead house, plus Wexshire and Greece, but she has no hold over this.’
‘Did Si come here much?’ Felix asked.
‘Only when invited, which wasn’t often while Dad was still alive. He didn’t trust Si with any assets after he took those paintings.’
‘The ones he “found in the attic” here, you mean?’
‘No.’ Thea, the deeper-voiced half of the cashmere hydra, shook her snake’s head. ‘The ones that went missing from the Locke Collection when Si was using drugs.’
‘He didn’t take anything from here that you remember?’ Phoebe asked.
The sisters side-eyed her with serpent-like disdain.
‘After your father died perhaps?’ Felix prompted.
‘Dad’s private collection here was all catalogued and microchipped. Nothing went missing.’
‘There was that box of old junk from upstairs Si wanted,’ Xanthe said. ‘But it was just Magenta’s bits and bobs.’
‘Magenta?’ Phoebe and Felix spoke in unison.
‘Not her real name. She was one of Dad’s girlfriends. The slutty one.’
‘They were all slutty.’ Thea’s voice undercut her sister’s, throaty with scorn.
The Locke sisters laughed together, the strangest sound, like two klaxons trying to out-honk each other.
After the sound had died down, Thea’s snake head curled round to remind Xanthe in her deep bass, ‘But Magenta was the only one of Dad’s mistresses he left Mum for.’
‘He did not!’ her sister hissed back. ‘He was just away working a lot that year.’
Xanthe composed herself and told Felix, ‘Magenta was a curator at The Locke Gallery when it was here in Chelsea. She was very pretty. She’d been part of the Goldsmiths set, getting pissed in the Bethnal Green shop and exhibiting at White Cube. She was a single mum. The kid’s father had been a musician.’
‘Overdose at an Exodus Collective Rave,’ Thea said scornfully, as though telling them he’d been to an inferior public school. ‘The band was the Jesus and Mary Chain, was it?’
‘The Wind Cries Mary,’ Xanthe corrected.
‘Jimmy Blue,’ Felix remembered, turning to Phoebe, his eyes ablaze.
‘Blue, Magenta and Violet,’ Phoebe breathed.
Juno
By the time the Berlingo was heading along Three Bridge Lane into Inkbury, ‘Love Shack’ was rejuvenating Juno’s mojo on Absolute 80s. She was going to move to her own little love shack soon, a fresh start. There would be a match out there for her.
Slowing up as they approached Hartridge Court, Sukey started indicating to turn into the side entrance.
‘Would you mind dropping me at Mr Benn’s Favourite Emporium instead?’ Juno raised her voice over the stereo, checking her watch. ‘I’m in loads of time and I didn’t get a chance to look at the flat last week. I’ve never lived above a shop before,’ she confided, eager to make up for boring Sukey about her love life. ‘I secretly hope it’s like Diagon Alley.’
‘Oh, you’ll like Mr Benn’s,’ Sukey promised, accelerating onwards. ‘It’s your era.’
Juno wanted to point out that now was also her era, but she needed Sukey to focus on the road as they racketed over the level crossing and the bridges, past The Barton Arms on one side and Davis and Locke’s shuttered shop face on the other, pelting on through the village before parking in Church Lane at an even more slap-dash angle than Juno’s recent efforts with the Jazz on Bridge Walk.
‘I’ll come up with you, shall I?’ Sukey offered. ‘See how much we can fit in there from Church House.’
‘Good idea,’ Juno nodded, grateful for the company, feeling an unexpected twinge of unease. ‘I know nothing about the place, except that the buildings are really old.’
‘It used to be an abattoir, I think,’ Sukey said helpfully.
‘As I feared,’ Juno shuddered. ‘Horror movie vibes. Noel Benn might not be travelling at all, but be desiccating up there watched over by Kevin Bacon, another victim of the village murderer.’
‘What are you saying?’ Sukey stared at her, open-mouthed.
Juno took a few deep breaths, aware that her anxiety was making her riff into a comedy routine. ‘That I must stop using my overactive imagination to reveal my secret angst at moving somewhere new. And that I am grateful to have someone with me who knows what they’re doing with a tape measure.’
‘Of course,’ Sukey said briskly, grabbing her plastic cup for life from the car holder. ‘I just need a coffee to go from the farm shop deli first. You?’
‘Good idea.’ Juno clambered out. ‘Kevin Bacon is the cat, by the way, although if the snake-hipped, Titian star of Footloose and the EE ads was curled up on the sofa I’d die happy.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Grateful for the support, Juno treated them both to organic coffees and brownies which cost just slightly less than a meal for two at Mil’s pub. Leaving Sukey to add sugars and wrestle with lids, she introduced herself effusively as a new neighbour to the barista – who turned out to be a student on work placement – before leading the way through to Wheeler’s Yard.
There was only one door to Mr Benn’s Favourite Emporium and its attached flat, she realised. ‘Looks like we have to go in through the shop.’
No alarm beeped as they entered. Behind the whitewashed windows, the building went back much further than she expected, a cavernous corridor of shelves, racks and display cases with sections marked ‘Groovy 70s’, ‘Racy 80s’ and ‘Cool 90s’.
‘My childhood, my teens, my twenties!’ Juno cried, moving from board games to books to clothes and vinyl. ‘How could this shop possibly fail?’
‘It was hardly ever open,’ Sukey pointed out, setting their coffees down on a table laden with old board games. ‘You can pick up most of the stuff here for pennies on eBay or car boots without rent and business rates on top.’ She looked round, tucking her neat bob behind her ears as she bent to examine an Olivetti typewriter in the ‘Groovy 70s’ section. ‘I sold him this. It belonged to your mother’s friend, Pam. Lovely lady. She was one of my first de-cluttering jobs.’
‘That’s who Mum’s with today,’ Juno told her. ‘Pam was singing your praises earlier for persuading her to keep Bridget.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Wise advice, I say, although there are probably a few copies in here.’ Juno headed for a revolving paperbacks display in ‘Cool 90s’, sighing nostalgically. ‘I always hoped I’d meet my own Mark Darcy.’ She glanced over her shoulder and realised Sukey was gaping at her.
‘Bridget Riley painted optical illusions. Originals are very valuable.’
Only now did Juno remember Phoebe sharing the Op Art link on WhatsApp. ‘Of course! They can sell for millions, can’t they? Well, Pam certainly loves hers.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘Shame it’s not painted by Bridget herself. A lot of modern art is all smoke and mirrors in my opinion – literally. Just take those Young British Artists from Sensation. Did you know a Damien Hirst ashtray from the nineties is worth up to six grand. For an ashtray!’
Sukey gazed at her, wide-eyed. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I Googled him yesterday. Bonkers amount of money, his stuff sells for. Let’s look at this flat.’ She headed for the stairs.
‘I’ll just get the coffees.’ Sukey retreated to the board game table. ‘You go on up.’
Upstairs was a less appealing reminder of Juno’s student flat share years than of her Sensation partying ones. Noel had clearly packed and left in a hurry, wardrobe doors thrown wide, clothes spilled across a Tracey Emin homage of an unmade bed. The fridge was a penicillin farm. There was even a fossilised ready meal in the microwave.
By the time Sukey joined her, looking pale-faced and jumpy – no doubt at the sight of such cluttered squalor – Juno had decided to think positive, insisting, ‘There is a certain decrepit beauty to it.’
Beneath the mess, it was a pleasantly light and neutral apartment, she realised, with cheap flat-pack furniture that she could carefully reflatten to pack away elsewhere. She could squeeze in quite a lot of her parents’ furniture, she pointed out to Sukey.
‘I don’t think so.’ Sukey was less optimistic, handing Juno her coffee.
‘There’s plenty of wall space.’ Juno studied the blank expanses, always astonished when homes had nothing on them. Church House had so many beams and windows, it wasn’t great for big paintings, but her parents had always been keener on photographs, books and musical instruments. Juno would salvage as much as possible, as well as reframing The Clash and Che Guevara. ‘I’ll cover these, never fear.’
‘With Damien Hirsts?’ Sukey asked in a flat voice.
‘If I had one of his, I’d be selling it, trust me!’ she scoffed. ‘And I can’t cram a thirty-foot church organ in here either.’
Her phone buzzed, an unfamiliar number.
Be with you in ten. White two sugars. *Smiling emoji*
‘It’s from the man fitting my mum’s tyres,’ she told Sukey. ‘I must go.’
‘I’ll take you there.’
‘I can walk the back way to Hartridge Court from here. I’ve abused your kindness enough as it is.’
‘Please let me take you,’ Sukey urged. ‘I’ve heard it’s an amazing place, and Felix and Phoebe sound incredible.’
‘They’re not there,’ she apologised.
‘Of course, you said they’re in London. Still, it’s no trouble,’ Sukey was undeterred, ‘it’s on my way!’
‘That’s super-kind. I just need to pop back into the deli for a tea with two sugars. I might get a top-up too. This one’s gone cold.’
‘You can microwave it!’ Sukey had flicked out the fossilised ready meal and Juno’s coffee was rotating inside before she could protest.
Humbled by the waste-nothing ethic, Juno only ordered the tyre fitter his tea.
Waiting for it at the deli counter, she felt the strange sense of apprehension again, like heartburn. But it was only when they drove back through the village – too fast – and whizzed past the antiques shop and pub that Juno started to question a few things. How had Sukey known where the side entrance to Hartridge Court was earlier? It wasn’t marked, yet she had driven straight past the locked gates to the house on the main road without asking for directions.
And why did she take her magnetic signs off her car so fastidiously each evening?
Phoebe had seen a boxy black SUV parked in her side entrance the night of the burglary at Davis and Locke. This was a boxy dark SUV.
What was it Phoebe had messaged the ‘Merde’ group last night?
Not two kinky doggers but one cat burglar.
Whoever had been in that car was almost certainly their masked intruder and, if Phoebe’s vape-spiking theory was correct, their murderer.
She glanced at Sukey’s hands on the wheel, small and neat-nailed with a very clean wedding band. The opiates that had killed Si would have been impossible for a layman to get hold of, but a former nurse married to a doctor?
But then again, why?
She was being paranoid, as usual, she decided. Overthinking. A conspiracy theorist. Phoebe would laugh at her.
Then Sukey turned off the side drive into the woods, the Berlingo bouncing over ruts like a rally car, and said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry to have to do this to you, Juno.’
At which point Juno’s scalp went ice-cold.
22
PHOEBE
On Cheyne Walk, the two-headed cashmere sister snake had given Phoebe and Felix a tour of the house, finishing in the attic, where they all paused to admire the view across the Thames.
Xanthe explained that their father had moved Magenta in not long after meeting her. ‘She brought the dead rock star’s child to live here too. Thin, grumpy little wastrel, like something out of Dickens.’
‘Violet?’ Phoebe pictured the frail doll’s dressmaker Jenny Wren from Our Mutual Friend.
‘No, that wasn’t her name. It was traditional. Jane? Kate? Can you remember, Thea?’
‘Oh, something equally forgettable.’
‘Did this girl and Si get to know one another?’ asked Felix. ‘Play together?’
‘God, no! He was a baby. Our mother never let him come here then.’
‘Dad only moved Magenta in here because he felt sorry for her.’
‘He left Mum for her, Xanthe!’
‘He did not! He was away working.’
The hydra started fighting itself again.
‘Dad always stayed here with Magenta during the week.’ Thea’s deeper voice claimed authority. ‘With her and the child – was it Lucy? Ann?’
‘Susan! She was called Susan!’
‘That was it. And wasn’t Susan Magenta’s real name too?’
‘You might be right. Susan and Susan. Not exactly Cool Britannia!’ They laughed together, the competitive klaxon honking sound making both Phoebe and Felix step back.
‘Two Susans,’ Phoebe murmured, turning to him. ‘Ring any bells?’
Felix shook his head, asking them, ‘How old was the daughter?’
‘Maybe six or seven? Barely spoke a word. Just death-stared like Wednesday Addams. Dad enrolled her in pre-prep and hired a nanny, one of those brown-uniformed Mary Poppins ones that marched her to the school gates each morning. He packed her straight off to board as soon as she was old enough.’
Phoebe, who had boarded and hated it, could only imagine the shock of it happening so young, especially to a girl who had already lost one parent. Amid the affluent excess of Nigel Locke’s lifestyle, Susan Jr had been viewed as an encumbrance.
‘There were non-stop parties here after that.’ One sister’s voice gurgled with laughter at the memory. ‘Magenta just drifted about getting stoned.’
‘That’s when the fun started, eh, Xanthe?’
‘God, but those were good times, weren’t they?’
‘That’s when we met you, Felix.’
The two-headed caramel snake cleaved towards him.
Phoebe recoiled, hating them. Smiling, Felix stood his ground and asked how long Magenta had lived here.
‘Seemed ages, but looking back she was here three years tops, maybe?’
‘Right up until she pegged it.’
‘Magenta died?’ Felix said, catching Phoebe’s eye, shocked.
She held his gaze, reading his thoughts. They shared too many lost friends who had died before they’d really lived, sucked under by addiction.
‘Was that drugs too?’ she asked the sisters.
One shrugged, the other shook her head and said, ‘Cervical cancer.’
Looking away, Phoebe’s heart went out to poor Magenta and her fate. She’d also had far too many friends who’d had life stolen by the silent killer, indiscriminate and monstrously unfair. She’d shared a chemo ward with several.
‘Dad threw lots of money at it in search of a cure,’ Xanthe was saying, ‘flew her all over the place for treatment, but Magenta was too far gone. Still only in her twenties when she died. Probably lifestyle choices.’
‘What happened to her daughter?’ Felix asked quickly, watching Phoebe, whose poker face was under threat, her fingers balled into tight fists in her pockets as she turned to glare out of the window at London’s skyline, not trusting herself to speak.
