A bit later, he seemed to be in some discomfort. His face was flushed and he kept putting his hand over his heart. He wriggled back in his chair and mumbled something nonsensical about an army of spiders. He looked quite upset.
“Why don’t you go to bed,” I said. “You don’t look ever so well. A good night’s sleep will probably sort it out.” And he must have been feeling rough because he took my advice. I followed him to make sure he went the right way.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It took me some time to get to sleep that night, but eventually I nodded off and I dreamt of berries, mushrooms, and cakes.
I woke the next morning knowing the deadly nightshade would have done some work on James, but would it have done enough?
I listened for the sound of him getting up and going to work at the usual time, but the house was silent. By quarter to eight, it was beyond a late start. In all the years we’d been married, I’d never known James get up later than seven. I rose and went to his room.
I was glad I hadn’t been there. Judging by the expression on his face, he had not gone gentle into that good night and I would not have liked to have heard what was going on. It might even have prompted me to call an ambulance. I thought of all my hopeless plotting and scheming, and in the end he did the job himself. I lifted his arm, rigor mortis hadn’t set in, he was still quite warm, but I’d have to get a move on.
I went to the lounge to think and soon afterward went back to his room with his phone. I unlocked it with his fingerprint and began to scroll through. I started with his WhatsApp.
I scrolled down his many contacts until I found messages between him and Lennie going to and fro, often laced with expletives. The essence of them was much the same as the conversation I’d had with James when I asked for my money back:
Lennie wanted to make a withdrawal.
James said that was fine, but he’d be making a big loss.
Lennie said he only wanted a little bit.
And James said, yes “but it affects the baseline differential, which impacts the foundational basis of the investment and will impinge on the ultimate, optimum return potential.”
That didn’t make any sense to me and nor did it to Lennie, and I think that was the point. As Lennie said in his reply,Does that mean anything, or are they just random words you’ve chosen? GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK!
The messages went on, for days, until Lennie announced he was going to the police, unless James a) gave him the money he’d asked for, and b) made a substantial donation to his hospice appeal.
Right. Fine, James wrote back.As a gesture of goodwill, with no admission of liability, I shall make the payments. How much?
£50,000 to me and £500,000 for the hospice. So, Lennie really was a saint and James had paid nearly half of the money raised for the hospice on the night of the accident. That must have stuck in his craw.
There were no more messages for a while and I thought Lennie would exit stage left at that point, but in a final twist, there was one more WhatsApp message from him, sent on the morning of the party.
I’M STILL GOING TO THE POLICE, YOU CHARLATAN!
Was that the WhatsApp that sealed his fate? If so, the moral of Lennie’s story was that blackmailers should stick to their side of the bargain. Although at that point, none of us knew I was going to run him over. That was just a lucky break from James’s point of view. When it happened, he spotted his chance to get rid of Lennie and set me up to take the fall.
If the police had seen those messages between Lennie and James, it would surely have sent them in James’s direction. It seemed fair to assume that was why James had taken the phone.
So, Lennie had also had trouble getting his money back from James. I had imagined that if I were cleverer or stronger or more assertive I would have persuaded James to return the funds I had invested. I thought that if I were the kind of person who understood phrases like “baseline differential” and “foundational basis,” I would be able to talk him round. But no, not even a man as successful as Lennie could get blood out of the stone that was James without threatening him with the police, which was something I would not be well advised to do. Although judging by the way he’d been selling property and cutting costs—the Bentley, the redundancies, and, I was sure, his watch—some people had. I wondered what they’d had to do.
I looked through other apps and found a list of his clients. Most of the names I didn’t recognize; they were wealthy people, and most of them had put in at least a million pounds. After a while, I found a copy of my own, then I found investments for a Gordon and Margery Fisk, a more modest £125,000 each. That must be Margery from the party and her husband.
Next, I found documents for the Faulkners, the Chamberses, Mary Bishop, the Thrussells, and the Thorpes. I found entries formost of the rest of the village. The amounts they’d invested mostly ranged from fifty to one hundred thousand.
Near the bottom I found one for a Mr. Lennie Green, £250,000.
And then, Eric and Brenda Billings for £20,000. Their nest egg.
I would have liked to have told Tarquin about what I’d found on James’s phone, but he no longer had any interest in the matter. I wondered if it would put things in a different light with Parker and Khan, but I had a dead body to deal with now, and that made the new evidence something of a sideshow.
***
I opened James’s Amazon account and went on a spending spree. I bought the basics you would need for a new life: clothes, shoes, toiletries, towels, bed linen, crockery, and pots and pans. Then I had them delivered to an address I picked at random, somewhere in Greater Manchester, and I addressed them to Mr. George Strange. I spared a thought for the poor soul who was about to receive it all, but at least, when James was declared missing, it would point the police away from the idea that he had died in his bed.
Next, I drove down to the SPAR, and as I arrived, I paused, opened the car door a sliver, and dropped James’s phone on the ground, just outside the carpark. I went inside, bought a few things I had been known to buy before: chips, chicken nuggets, crisps, crisps, crisps, crisps, crisps, and more crisps, now that I was no longer restricted by James, plus chocolate. Then I left, taking care not to run over the phone as I drove away. I was trusting in the honesty of Upper Iffley shoppers to hand it in when they saw it. It was not a stunt you could pull in Great Beadington—they’d be off with it quicker than you could say “lost property.”
