Walking with Ghosts

And then his thoughts returned to Dora, and he wondered what it would feel like to be a widower all over again.
    When Holly left the office, Jill said, ‘I want you to handle this job yourself.’
    ‘I’ll give it all the time I can. I’m not gonna promise anything, Jill, except you’ll get the same attention you did in the past. This time it might be Geordie who handles it, or Marie. Maybe both of them, instead of me. But at the end of the day you’ll get better service from us than you’ll get from anyone else.’
    She smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dream of giving it to anyone else.’
    ‘So what’ve you got?’
    ‘Edward Blake.’
    ‘I thought that was all over. You mean you haven’t paid him yet?’
    Jill shook her head. ‘You remember the story?’
    Sam showed her the palms of his hands. ‘Only what was in the papers. You’d better fill me in. I never thought I’d be working on it.’
    Jill spoke with a clear voice, as if she was making a presentation. ‘Edward Blake is a political lobbyist. He came to prominence in the eighties, and made money under Thatcher and Major. In the spring his wife, India, was kidnapped. But he didn’t go to the police. According to Blake he received a call from the kidnapper, and paid a ransom of twenty-five thousand pounds. But India was not released, and nothing more was heard from the kidnapper.
    ‘When Blake did call in the police, a search was launched, but nothing was found. There was no real evidence to confirm that she’d been kidnapped, apart from Blake’s story, and the police thought she’d run off with a lover. They reasoned that India and her lover had stung Blake for the twenty-five. Anyway, the whole thing died down, the newspapers found another cause to stick on the front page. We had several weeks of minor royals in and out of each other’s playpens. But then, three months later, India Blake’s body was found in a box in a garden allotment shed near the racecourse. She had been left to starve to death. The police took Edward Blake into custody, held him for a time, and seemed fairly convinced that he had been behind it. Especially when they discovered that he’d insured her for two and a half million pounds the previous year.’
    ‘You still think he did it?’ asked Sam.
    Jill shrugged her shoulders. ‘We want you to look into it. Two and a half million pounds is a lot of money. But if you say the man’s kosher we’ll pay out.’
    ‘The police have written him out of it?’
    Jill nodded. ‘He has finished helping them with their inquiries. There was a time when they were convinced he did it. But since the DNA tests they’ve left him alone.’
    Sam finished his coffee and looked at the jug. Jill moved it closer to him. ‘She was pregnant, wasn’t she?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes. Only just. The presumption is that she was raped by the kidnapper. What is certain is that whoever the father was, it wasn’t her husband.’
    ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Sam said. ‘Why haven’t you paid the guy?’
    Jill shrugged. ‘It smells,’ she said.
    ‘These things always smell a little,’ Sam said. He sniffed. ‘Yeah, there’s a real whiff, but it’s not like it makes your nose fall off. I bet if it wasn’t two and a half mill you’d have paid him by now.’
    ‘Oh, sure, Sam. Of course we would. But I’m hoping that if we pay your daily rate for a couple of weeks, we might save ourselves a lot of money.’
    She walked to the lift with him. ‘I hope Dora’ll be all right,’ she said.
    Sam didn’t say anything.
    ‘She’s lucky to have someone to take care of her.’
    Sam smiled. ‘You don’t need taking care of, Jill.’
    ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s a bitch.’
    She touched his arm as he stepped into the lift, dug out the soft smile, the one with the hint of concern in it, and flashed it at him as the doors closed between them.
    Sam looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror that made up one side of the lift, and shook his head. Why didn’t they just pay the guy? Jill acted like it would be coming out of her personal bank account instead of corporate funds expressly put aside for the purpose.
    Still, why should Sam Turner worry? It meant work for the business, paid work. And the thing was about work from Jill, she paid well, and she paid quickly.
    The job would consist of straightforward leg work, interviews with the dead woman’s associates, maybe a little surveillance on Edward Blake. Sam wouldn’t need to get too