By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1) Read online

  BY the LIGHT of a LIE

  Marjorie Orr

  Horme Publishing

  Suite 310, 176 Finchley Rd.,

  London NW3 6BT

  All rights reserved. Marjorie Orr has asserted her right under the Copyright, design and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All characters in the publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Spiffing Covers

  ISBN: 978-0-9562587-2-4

  Copyright: Marjorie Orr 2017

  Marjorie Orr is a former print and television journalist, BBC documentary producer, psychotherapist and media astrologer with a global footprint. Political astrology is her main interest (www.star4cast.com) and her previous non-fiction book The Astrological History of the World was hailed as ‘living proof of astrology.’ This is her debut novel and she lives in the South of France.

  CHAPTER 1

  The rat crouched on top of the low wall, its nose twitching upwards with anticipation as it sniffed the early morning air. Long whiskers quivered as it searched for the source of the smell. Rank, sulphurous with a hint of sewage, the faint odour eddied and flowed in the riverside breeze. Two sets of yellowing, pronged tusks below its narrow snout were bared in preparation for a tasty morsel ahead. The beady eyes were intent, although flickering constantly on a radar sweep in the dim light for predators or rivals. Overhead the faint sliver of moon was abandoning its struggle against the polluted air to fade to nothing.

  The rumble of a city that never slept grew louder as dawn broke, although it was muted in this enclave, which did not encourage passing traffic. The Thames was easing back from its height, the brown water rippling sluggishly away from the muddy banks. Low tide was still five hours away when the dank shoreline would be fully exposed, littered with rocks and accumulated detritus.

  Minutes passed and the rat on the far side of the road was nibbling rapidly, its bucktooth prongs tugging at a small chunk of meat. Approaching voices from Blackstone Terrace, leading up to the underpass, caused it to tense then reverse into a space between stones where the low wall had collapsed.

  ‘I don’t know why we have to come here, Jaz. It’s frigging freezing. That café was much warmer. I wanna go home.’

  The younger of two teenagers shivered inside his grubby sweatshirt, the hood covering all but a few strands of his lank black hair. The sleeves were pulled down to act as gloves as he clutched a paper mug of coffee to his chest. He trailed after the older boy, scuffing his trainers on the ground, and sat on the near wall beside the broken section, hunching his back against the wind.

  ‘Quit whining, will you, Petey. You got to toughen up. You know it ain’t safe to go home till Pa’s gone to work, especially since we got nothing to show for a night’s sweat.’ Jaz, across the road, faced out to the river, striking a pose with one skinny knee pulled up and his foot planted on the parapet wall. His hood billowed out as the gusts picked up. ‘Anyways, you can sometimes find useful gaff here when the tide goes out.’ He scanned the stretch of mud downstream as the river receded seawards.

  ‘We’re blaggers and not fuckin’ scavengers, Jaz.’ Petey stamped his foot on the ground with irritation, then half jumped up. ‘Oh fuck, I think I put my foot in oil. Some bastard rear-ended this wall and must’ve done the sump. The shit’s all over the place.’ He shuffled further along, wiping his hand on his jeans, leaving dark smears. He sniffed his hand and shrugged. ‘Doesn’t smell like oil.’ His back bent lower over his coffee. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and sighed miserably.

  A yelp from across the road was followed by running footsteps. ‘We’re in business, my son. Lookie.’ Jaz leaned excitedly over the wall, pointing to the half-hidden handbag with a gold lipstick case glinting in the grey light beside it and a leather wallet caught between stones two yards away. He swung one leg over, then stopped halfway. His shriek drifted out across the water. ‘Holy Christ, there’s a body.’

  The two boys clung to each other as they looked towards the tide line ten feet away where a woman’s foot was tangled in a loop of wire rope. Her body was floating face down in the moving water, the current pulling her white blouse round her auburn hair and her skirt up her exposed back. One arm was visible, the hand crushed with part of a finger missing.

  ‘She got no knickers on, Jaz. You think she was raped?’ Petey whispered hoarsely, clinging onto his brother’s arm, his face lit up with appalled fascination.

  ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ Jaz said after a few seconds. ‘We need to get out of here before we get nicked. I’ll just see what’s in the wallet.’ He swung his other leg across the wall and stood gingerly on a flat boulder, then stepping-stoned his way across to the wallet without leaving footprints in the mud. He averted his eyes from the body and twisted round to pull out a handkerchief that was protruding out of the handbag. He used it to pick up the wallet, search through the contents and remove a wad of notes. Then he threw the wallet towards the body without looking.

  ‘No sense in takin’ the credit cards. Not with a dead body. Even Sid wouldn’t touch them. Jesus.’ He reversed with difficulty over the rocks and sat down breathing heavily, sweat trickling down his acned forehead.

  He turned with alarm when Petey started taking photographs of the body with his camera. ‘Whatya doin? You nuts? We were never here, got it?’ He punched his brother hard on the shoulder.

  ‘Keep yer lid on. We can sell them to that dodgy photographer up Stanford Brook. He gets good money from newspapers and the telly. No questions asked. He’ll say he bought them from someone passing by after the body was found. You got her name, yeah?’

  The sound of a car on the far side of the Flying Duck pub a few hundred yards down the road cut their argument short and they ran back towards the underpass, their hoods pulled up. As they passed the caved-in section of wall, the morning light glinted on a pool of congealing blood. Petey reversed and took several shots of it, then sprinted after his brother.

  The rat was huddled closer into the undergrowth of a bush, gnawing on its prize. It had cleaned the flesh off a small bone and was working its way steadily up to a varnished fingernail.

  CHAPTER 2

  Crimson ink slithered down the opera programme, curling round the grille of prison bars across the cover and splayed out to reveal the gothic font of Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk. Tire Thane sat frozen at her desk, consumed by the image as if her gaze was all that was holding her upright. Her mobile was still in her hand.

  How the hell? Erica had left her at 11 pm last night outside the theatre in St Martin’s Lane, taking a cab home to Hampstead to review case papers before court today. Killed in a hit and run near Hammersmith around 2 am this morning. That’s what the secretary from her chambers had phoned to say, between bouts of tears.

  Why would she be miles away in the opposite direction hours later? It made no sense.

  A message ping from her laptop dragged her attention away from the gory artwork and she reached across the clutter on the desk to drop a folder on top of it. With a wince she remembered Erica’s parting words. ‘Can we try Gilbert and Sullivan next time? The screams of dying women. Ouch. Too much like work to be relaxing.’ Then she had given a bright smile and disappeared into the taxi.

  Still too stunned to be operating at her normal speed, Tire absently clicked on the email, which was from a newspaper features editor. ‘Good stuff. Grateful for quick delivery.’ A rush demand for an old travel piece as colour background to the recent flare-up in fighting in Ethiopia had kept her up till the early hours, tightening and revising. Holiday in sunny Yabelo, she had th
ought gloomily as she sent it, and get yourself butchered. But money was money and she was her only support system.

  The tooting brass of Shostakovich’s ‘Festive Overture’ was jangling her head, so she killed the sound on the speakers. The jumbled skyline of Soho on the other side of the glass wall of the office seemed to be advancing towards her. She blinked, stood up suddenly and knocked over the remnants of her coffee onto the grey carpet. With a curse she dropped a handful of paper tissues on it and tramped them into the puddle. ‘What should I do, what should I do?’ was running on a loop in her mind as shock started to give way to anger.

  A thought struck her, so she sat back down and clicked through to the Standard news site. Under the headline ‘Woman Killed in Riverside Accident’ was a brief paragraph with the location. About to reach for another cigarette, she picked up her mobile instead and entered Blackstone Street, W6 into the GPS.

  Five minutes later she was running out of her bedroom in a grey, sleeveless tank top, tight sweatpants, a mesh cap rammed over her cropped blonde hair, and a jogging belt containing phone, money, keys and a water bottle.

  Did she really want to see where Erica had died? Her gut screamed no. Common sense said there was no point. But the impulse for action overrode both.

  As her hand reached out to open the front door, a heavy knock from the other side made her head grate and her heart jolt. Who the hell? Her third-floor apartment was in a portered block so access was by street-level intercom only. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to shut down her feelings.

  ‘Yeah?’ she shouted through the door.

  ‘Maintenance, ma’am. For the sink.’

  Standing to the left of the door she clicked open the heavy security lock. She leaned round the frame, her left hand grasping a spiky bronze statuette that sat on the glass console table. She eyed the stocky, crew-cutted figure with a toolbox in the hallway suspiciously.

  ‘Who are you? Where’s Ali?’

  ‘Had to go out for a couple of hours. I’m just standing in.’

  ‘You could be anyone,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Anyone’s my middle name. Anyone and no one. That’s me.’

  They stared at each other. He was only slightly taller than her five foot seven, well built, with muscular, tattooed arms, a short neck and deep-set, tired blue eyes in a broad face. His jeans and grey T-shirt were crumpled, his desert boots scuffed and worn.

  ‘And you can put down that weapon you’re clutching. I’m no going to attack you,’ he remarked with a faint smile, his Scottish burr lengthening vowels and dropping consonants. ‘My name’s Herk, if you’re interested. Herk Calder. Handyman extraordinaire. I’ll fix your tap and be away in five minutes.’

  ‘Herk?’ she asked slowly, still doubtful about letting him in.

  He scratched his head. ‘Well, I don’t normally admit this. But since you’re so antsy it’s not a nickname, which is most often how I explain it. My sainted parents christened me Hercules.’

  Tire laughed in spite of herself. ‘Ouch. Your army mates must have loved that. You were army, weren’t you? You have that look.’

  ‘Aye, twenty years since I was sixteen. Just out a few months. But we’re not here to talk about me. Lead the way to the tap and I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.’

  Seeing her standing firm, he took out his mobile, scrolled down and clicked a number, then handed it to her. Ali at the other end, the porter, assured her that Herk was more trustworthy than an archbishop and was his replacement for a few days, but please not to tell the landlord.

  In the kitchen, Herk crawled under the sink and emerged saying gruffly: ‘I was wrong. I’ll need to go get another trap. That rubbish in there isn’t holding and it’s leaking into the flat down below.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with it.’ Her desperation spilled over into irritation and swept away any misgivings. ‘You’ve got Ali’s key. Just do it and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  CHAPTER 3

  Her trainers thudded mechanically onto the pavement. Past the Grill Shack, already wafting burger smells onto the street, with a wave for Sak, the Romanian cook smoking in the alleyway. Round the corner, she paused to smile and drop two pound coins in the begging bowl of a dishevelled youth sitting on the pavement with a scruffy mongrel. A motorcyclist on a bright blue Suzuki revved up beside her so she missed his mumbled ‘thanks’. Then right onto Regent Street, crowded with shoppers.

  Erica Smythson was one of the few friends she had made in recent years. A smart young barrister, stick thin from overwork and worry, she was a specialist in domestic abuse and human rights cases. They had met at the Frontline Club over drinks after a harrowing documentary about a Syrian torture victim, an escapee from Daesh, who had told his story and then committed suicide. A war correspondent friend of Tire’s boyfriend introduced them and nudged Erica. ‘Play your cards right and you’ll get them read.’

  Tire rolled her eyes upwards, managed a wry smile and said: ‘Hi. I’m an investigative and travel writer. That attempt at wit was aimed at my astrology hobby. I roll it out at New Year as my party piece.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a joke.’ Erica frowned and nodded to an empty table. She said confidentially after they sat down: ‘My aunt was keen on astrology. She taught me a great deal about people.’

  ‘But only to be whispered in corners.’ Tire smiled, sensing Erica’s protectiveness towards underdogs. ‘I do use it, in-depth astrology I mean, not the flim-flam stuff, to get a handle on people I’m writing about.’ She grinned. ‘Not that I’d ever admit it in print. But my main interest is in geopolitical stuff – the astrology of the Iraq War, the financial crash, whither the USA.’

  ‘Ooh, tell me more.’

  Their friendship settled into a weekly night out over dinner and the theatre. Tire was pleased to have an intelligent and receptive ear for a subject she rarely discussed elsewhere. Erica shared concerns about the cases she was handling, without giving specifics, and asked occasionally for help in understanding tricky clients and colleagues. She did receive death threats but refused to take them seriously.

  Tire tried not to imagine her body lying in a heap by the roadside. She screwed up her eyes, trying to blot out another image of a bloody corpse from long ago, then had to open them in a hurry as she cannoned into a heavily pierced teenager carrying a tray of paper coffee cups. Mouthing ‘sorry’, she sidestepped and nearly tripped over a news vendor. Ignoring the loud complaints she ran on, past Hamley’s toyshop, round the curved grandeur of lower Regent Street.

  Pounding along Piccadilly, keeping pace with a constant flow of cars and buses edging their way to Hyde Park Corner and giving the finger to wolf-whistling workmen, she racked her brain trying to remember the name of Erica’s latest boyfriend, another barrister in the same chambers. Upper crust. Brideshead type name. Sebastian. That was it. Crumley.

  Erica had turned up at her flat a month ago still in her dark city suit, looking embarrassed, clutching a bottle of expensive Bordeaux.

  ‘We celebrating, then?’ asked Tire.

  ‘Well, nothing really. But there is someone new who might be…’ she trailed off.

  ‘Ah. A possibility?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she fidgeted. ‘Um, I wondered if you could look him up?’ she waved at Tire’s PC.

  Tire chuckled. ‘Do you not think you might just enjoy him and see where it goes?’

  She shrugged hopelessly and took a deep breath. ‘What you told me about the married one let me see him clearly for the first time. The shit. So Jupiterian. He is just like Zeus, thinks rules don’t apply to him. I don’t know how I can have been so blind. I know you don’t like being an agony aunt. But just this once. Please.’

  How could she not have known Erica was at risk? Why hadn’t she said something? Death never showed up on a chart, but danger did. One answer was her aversion to being dragged in as the all-knowing fixer of other people’s problems. But it wasn’t that simple. There had been dramatic changes and challenges in
Erica’s life, which she had noted and written off as career pressures in a job that thrived on crises.

  Her feet were on automatic pilot so she had no recollection of getting from one side of the six-lane Hyde Park intersection, bowing under the weight of vehicles, to the other, although her nose retained a hint of a urine-soaked underpass. Then through the diaphanous kitsch of the Queen Mother Gates, she was into the green of the park.

  What was Erica doing in Hammersmith when she should have been at home? She had a crucial day in court today in a difficult case defending a man she thought was innocent but would not help himself.

  The clip-clop of horse hooves diverted Tire’s attention briefly as a dozen Household Cavalry rode past, flashing red and gilt against the lush grass and leafy trees. In spite of herself she smiled. She jogged on, more relaxed with nature around and the Serpentine lake humming blue in the background. Her mind drifted off to Jin, imagining herself wrapped round his lanky frame.

  What would he be doing? No, that wasn’t a good thought. She frowned and yanked a strand of hair off her sweaty forehead. Sitting in some hellhole in Syria or Yemen getting blasted by grenade launchers or worse, his eye fixed to the aperture that would preserve the moment for posterity. Normally she shut down worries about his survival, but this time her sense of dread was ratcheted up to a constant background presence. Settling her stride twenty paces behind a tracksuited runner, she pulled her thoughts back to what Erica had told her of the trial she was about to start.

  Accountant Jack Greengate was accused of murdering his wife by hitting her over the head with a hammer when he was drunk. He was not a heavy drinker, but remembered little of that night. There were incriminating emails to an office secretary suggesting an affair. He was so distraught Erica could get little out of him and had to lean hard to get him to plead not guilty.