Death by Indulgence Page 10

  Harry took his seat again as Ella began to rub her skin with oil.

  ‘So when did you begin life-modelling?’ A standard question from Harry. Nothing untoward. Safe subject matter about her life, but not at all useful in exploring his life story, habits and secrets, or his friendship with Marcus Carver.

  ‘I only started a year or so ago, to earn a little extra cash between jobs.’ Ella had spoken herself into trouble. Her preoccupation with the indentations on her skin had resulted in a rash lack of concentration.

  ‘Have you always been in the hospitality trade?’ A peculiar emphasis on the word hospitality made Ella stop stroking her skin and look into Harry’s eyes. He averted his gaze and looked down at the sketchpad on his knees. ‘I only ask because you seem so confident out there in the restaurant, I assume you’ve had a few years to hone your skills.’

  Ella didn’t get a chance to answer. The bottle of oil slipped through her fingers and she scrabbled to retrieve it from the towel as its precious contents glugged out. Harry was suddenly beside her holding the container and chuckling. ‘Clumsy. Here… let me.’

  Holy shit. He’s touching me.

  Nothing untoward happened. Ella accepted the free massage. Another five minutes passed during which she tried to steer the conversation towards information about Marcus Carver. ‘How long have you and Mr C been coming to Buxham’s?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘You must be quite good friends. How do you know each other?’ Harry would not be drawn on detail and Ella had to back off before she was rumbled.

  ‘There, your skin looks lovely now,’ Harry said, twisting the cap back on to the bottle of oil. ‘There’s a special sheen to it. Lay back as you were. Just relax and take a break while I draw.’

  She did as she was asked and valiantly fought the fatigue that threatened to overwhelm her. It had been a hard few days and the long hours, extra concentration of learning a new job, a dose of Lorazepam and being undercover were beginning to sap her usual boundless energy levels. The daily battle with her brain chemistry was exhausting enough.

  When Ella awoke, she was covered by a towelling bathrobe and Harry was gathering her clothes and belongings from the bathroom. The scene made its way slowly into her conscious mind, and only then did the consequences of her error dawn on her. Falling asleep had been unforgivable. When she eventually made sense of the world around her, she saw that Harry had been looking at the contents of her substantial handbag. He had one hand inside the bag, the other holding it open by the loop of leather handle as he crouched on the bathroom floor.

  She spoke up, croaking.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so, so, so sorry. How rude of me. I can’t apologise enough.’

  Unexpectedly Harry laughed. Releasing his grip on something inside her handbag he looked at her as he stood upright. ‘Please don’t apologise. I’ve drawn my best ever work. Look at this.’ He dropped Ella’s clothes onto the bedspread where she could reach them and left her bag on the floor beside the bed. He then rushed over to the table, eager to show her his sketch.

  Having hurriedly put on her bra and pulled the cashmere sweater over her head, she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, her lower half covered by the bathrobe. Ella stared in disbelief at what she saw. Holding the sketchpad in both hands, nausea ascended her throat to the degree that saliva predicted she would vomit. She held on. Cold. Empty. He must have moved her hand while she’d been asleep because the drawing showed her fingers placed strategically between her legs.

  Had he?

  She couldn’t be sure. Maybe she’d moved in her sleep. How could she know?

  He seemed to read her expression. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. This is beautiful. So natural, so incredibly erotic, and it’s mine to keep and gaze upon. I’m ecstatic, Ella. Can we do this again sometime?’

  With no way of knowing precisely what had happened, Ella simply nodded, and gathered up the rest of her clothes before skedaddling into the bathroom. Once there with the door locked behind her, she stood at the sink to steady herself. Breathing rapidly, she scanned up and down in the mirror yet she found no unusual marks. She checked her most intimate places and could find no evidence of interference. Nothing.

  Pull yourself together, woman. Get back out there and smile, for God’s sake. Your mistake. You sort it.

  What had his facial expressions told her? Had he lied? Was he teasing her? She didn’t know. For once she could not work it out. All she could reasonably do was to apologise once more before she left to return to her own small room on the upper floor, in the eaves of the main house. Once there, heart thumping like a maniacal drummer boy, she removed every item of her handbag contents and placed them on her bed. Ella then reviewed what each could reveal about her to anyone who may be interested. To Harry Drysdale. Fortunately, obeying the rules of the house, her mobile phone had remained in her room. It lay on her bedside table. She reached for it, desperate for advice and reassurance.

  A second before she pressed the favourites button on the phone to contact Mal, she glanced at the time. Holding herself back from making such a call in the middle of the night she sent a placatory text instead.

  Two words.

  18

  All fine

  The smallest of big lies.

  It was too late at night to phone Ada; Ada needed her sleep. She didn’t even entertain the idea of contacting Val because she could only imagine the fury with which her confession would be met. Ella could almost hear Val’s words ‘You fell asleep? You stupid fucking moron…’

  Calculating the hour or so she had lost, Ella was horrified. There was no way she could have slept for that long, she thought, and checked the clock in her room again. A whole hour fast asleep on the bed of the man she was employed to find out about. Sixty long exposed minutes with the person she was assigned to spy on.

  She knew no more now about Harry Drysdale than when she had first met him. He, however, probably knew her full name, that she had a dentist’s appointment the following week and that she was on medication. Which, if he cared to look it up, would tell him that she was under treatment for a serious mental health condition. Apart from that, he would have scavenged little in the way of personal information from the contents of her bag. On her bed lay the usual culprits: hairbrush, tissues, lip-gloss, alcohol hand rub, a small pharmacy of pills, some for headaches, and two pens. She also carried with her two torches, or what looked like torches, but which were in fact small digital cameras. No barrister would have any clue as to their true use, she convinced herself.

  Wait.

  Where was her tiny notepad? And more importantly what had she written in it?

  Without her phone to hand while she was on shift at Buxham’s, Ella had taken to scribbling ideas and observations into a handy-sized note pad that lived in her pocket when she was working, or in her bag. She hadn’t been so stupid as to write names down but to someone astute and intelligent like Harry it would be a gift.

  In a state of abject panic she thrust her hands back into her handbag to double check and with an overwhelming release of tension finally located it wedged into an inside zip. She stared at the small book, flicked through the pages and put a hand to her mouth. ‘How incredibly fucking thick am I?’ she whispered bitterly.

  There was one question that persisted throughout the restless night; did Harry Drysdale read anything written in that notebook while she had slept?

  19

  The Search

  January 25th - The Valiant Soldier

  ‘Shall we start with Marcus Carver’s wife? What’s the scandal there?’ Annette asked as she picked up her fourth giant deep-fried onion ring of the evening. She had polished off a fourteen-ounce T-bone steak with hand-cut chips and peas and was grazing on the remnants of the side orders.

  Konrad had scraped clean his bowl of carrot and coriander soup, reluctantly donating the second slice of farmhouse bread-and-butter to Barney to mop up gravy from his plate of steak and kidney pudding.

  Lo
rna wiped her fingers on a paper serviette and from her bag she took out a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook, flipping the cover and the first three or four pages. Having found the page she was looking for, she began to list a number of facts about Lydia Carver.

  ‘Thirty-two-years-old, so a fair few years younger than her husband. Nothing wrong with that, obviously,’ she said looking over at Konrad. ‘Her two children, eight and six are from a previous relationship. Her first husband skedaddled off with his accountant, his male accountant, by the name of Jordan Wallasey, who has a notoriously filthy drag act as a side-line to book-keeping. This outrageous turn of events understandably left Lydia feeling devastated, especially as she was pregnant at the time.’

  ‘This sounds reminiscent of a cheap drama series,’ Annette said licking at her fingertips. ‘Does this mean that she and Marcus haven’t been married for too long?’

  Konrad chuckled to himself. ‘Right on cue, Miss Marple.’

  Lorna smiled gratefully at Annette. ‘Spot on, Netty. She and Marcus had been married for over four years during which time she put on an enormous amount of weight. She was never svelte, but the few photos I managed to find demonstrate a dangerous upward trend in dress size from the moment she met him.’ Lorna pulled up images of Lydia Carver on to the screen of her iPad and swung it round for all to see.

  ‘Fine looking woman,’ Barney said.

  ‘She was then but let me show you how she looked just before Christmas.’

  ‘Bloody Nora! She must have lost a whole person’s worth of weight,’ Annette exclaimed, examining the photographs on screen more closely. ‘I thought it was a different woman for a mo.’

  ‘Quite a radical turnaround,’ Lorna confirmed. ‘In the ten months leading up to this Christmas the weight dropped off, revealing a woman who had shrunk down to a size fourteen from a size twenty-six. Too good to be true of course.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Annette. ‘He must have made her lose weight, put her under the knife or sucked the fat out.’

  ‘No. That’s where you’re wrong. I assumed the same, but Konrad’s sources in the world of plastic surgery tell a very different story indeed.’

  Konrad subconsciously touched the scarring on his face, stopping only because Lorna had become silent. This was an uncomfortable subject for them but Barney cut through the short awkward pause with his usual unsubtle humour. ‘So the man who rebuilt Cyclop’s face has something to do with fat Mrs Carver becoming thin Mrs Carver.’

  Lorna grinned with gratitude. ‘Not quite, Barney, but neatly put. An eminent bariatric surgeon by the name of Charles Broughton fitted a gastric band at Lydia Carver’s request, without her husband’s knowledge. Rumour has it that Marcus was furious when he eventually found out.’

  There was a chortle. It came from Barney. ‘I’d be bloody livid if Netty did that. Cor, bugger me. What would I do with a skinny bird? No. That’s a shocker. What was she thinking?’

  Annette wiped grease from her lips and kissed her husband on the cheek.

  ‘That’s almost exactly how we thought you’d react,’ Lorna said. ‘But you see, Kon and I didn’t respond in the same way. We initially assumed that she wanted to lose weight for her own reasons, perhaps to improve her health or feel better about herself, and that his practice had simply declined to do the surgery because she was his wife.’ She paused.

  ‘But to go ahead without her plastic surgery husband’s knowledge tells a different story. So I tried to explore in more depth the reasons why, because not only did she have surgery behind his back but she chose his rival.’ Lorna looked around her. The faces were blank.

  ‘Lydia met Marcus when she went for a consultation as a patient. He never performed any surgery, he chased her, metaphorically speaking of course, and pursued her romantically until she submitted. That’s the story. He wanted her to stay fat, at least that’s how it looks.’

  Annette clapped with excitement. ‘Superb. What’s the catch?’

  ‘I planned to interview her for an article in a health magazine to get a bit more of an idea about their relationship and as I’m freelance, there were no lies on my part but—’

  ‘She declined your offer?’

  Lorna shook her head. ‘Worse than that, Netty.’

  ‘She ran away?’

  ‘No. She’s dead. Ostensibly – so the story goes – her gastric band ruptured and killed her just after the New Year celebrations.’

  ‘Ruptured! Oh dear, those poor children. Do they know what happened? Was there a post mortem?’

  ‘Yes, there was. The Coroner has yet to set a date for a hearing but there’s an ongoing inquest. I tried to find out the details by bribing Katie at Wakeman’s Funeral Services but the Chinese whispers had resulted in a ridiculous story about Lydia over-indulging. Falling off the food waggon while she was staying with her parents after Christmas.’

  ‘That’s preposterous,’ Annette agreed, ‘a gastric band is supposed to reduce your ability to eat too much. There has to be more to the story than that.’

  Barney stretched, scratching his belly through layers of shirt and jumper. ‘How is this going to help us find Harry? I’m sorry that surgeon’s wife died and all that, but what is the connection between Marcus Carver and Harry, apart from having dinner with two decent sized women on a Wednesday?’

  Konrad had been biding his time, waiting to disclose the spicy information he had been given earlier that day. While his wife - consumed in her mission to find Harry - had been on the case of Lydia Carver, he had been putting feelers out to answer the question Barney had so eloquently raised. ‘You may well ask, old pal.’

  ‘I did ask.’

  ‘Yes. Well done. I may have part of an answer for you. Now then, what does Harry do for a living? … so I started there. My first call was to Rupert Van Dahl who I managed to catch in a semi sober state. He’d had the right amount of alcohol to loosen his tongue, but not too much to be unreliable as a grass. His chambers were involved in the same case.’

  ‘What case?’ Annette asked.

  Konrad took great satisfaction in stringing out the story of how Harry met Marcus because of allegations that sexually inappropriate examinations had been carried out by him in the course of his consultations.

  ‘Not only that, but he was charged with sexual assaults carried out shortly after surgery at a time when patients were sedated and or semi-conscious. According to Rupert Van Dahl QC, Harry Drysdale had been spectacular in his defence of his client.’

  ‘He must have been,’ Lorna said. ‘If the CPS felt there was a good enough case to go to court, then surely the evidence was solid enough to charge him and to expect a conviction.’

  Barney appeared to be fascinated by the corner of an old oak beam. He looked up to the ceiling with a smirk. ‘Hang on a minute. I don’t get this. Marcus Carvery …’

  ‘Carver.’

  ‘Yes ’im. He is a surgeon. His job is to cut fat bits off people. How would he do that unless he had a good old feel about? You know, prodding and kneading to work out where to cut and how much. Checking his handiwork after surgery and all that. I’ve seen them on the telly.’

  Konrad leant back in his chair. ‘You, my oldest and dearest fat friend, have hidden intellectual talents that are wasted in that workshop of yours. Wasted.’ He clapped his hands, slowly and deliberately as he took to his feet. ‘Ladies, this man has the mind of a barrister. That is the exact argument that Harry Drysdale used to defend Marcus Carver in court.’

  With his hands either side of his shoulders, palms upwards, Barney beamed. ‘It’s a gift. My amazing intelligence is what attracted Netty to me in the first place. Not only am I an engineering wizard, but I’m an intellectual brain-box in disguise. This caveman outer shell is a clever ruse designed to fool the public.’

  ‘Alright, Barney, don’t overdo it.’ Annette prodded him with her fork, making him flinch.

  Lorna leant in. ‘Surely the prosecution would have been prepared for that as an argument. It’s so
predictable, even Barney raised it.’

  Barney deflated like a pricked balloon. ‘Thanks, Lorna. There I was thinking I might actually be clever.’

  ‘No offence intended. You are clever, just not conventionally.’

  ‘None taken.’

  ‘Can you two please stop making my husband out to be the village idiot, and Barney, stop interrupting, let Kon answer Lorna’s question.’ Annette had rested her fork against her plate and was poised for Konrad’s response.

  Konrad cleared his throat. ‘Harry made use of a team of investigators to examine the lives of the three women who made the accusations. But, despite some damning evidence from the prosecuting lawyers, he undermined their credibility to the degree that the case collapsed. Not only did Marcus Carver walk away with his reputation intact but he was exonerated, leading to his skills being in greater demand than ever. Magnanimously he declined to sue for damages against the women. Incidentally, they were then charged with making false statements and perverting the course of justice with the aim of financial gain. It was a dog’s breakfast for the CPS.’

  ‘When was this?’ Lorna asked, looking again at the notebook she held in one hand.

  Konrad tapped the page she had open. ‘Would you believe, the most recent charges were made in 2013 but the case took over nine months to reach court. In that time what did Marcus do?’

  ‘Don’t tell me… he married Lydia,’ Barney said, nodding sagely.

  ‘Bloody hell. You are on fire, old pal.’

  20

  The Wednesday After Christmas

  Marcus hadn’t bothered convincing Lydia of a fictitious surgery list for the week between Christmas and New Year. He told her and the children that he was to attend a black-tie event at his gentleman’s club and staying over as he usually would on a Wednesday night. As he packed his bag, checked his suit, and gave a final buff to his shoes, he was closely watched by Lydia.