An Image to Die For by Mike Phillips

Author:Mike Phillips [Phillips, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-16T12:00:00+00:00

14

When I got back to Ida’s she was waiting up. She’d made up a bed for me on the sofa in the sitting room, and I thought for a moment she was going to sit around talking the way we used to, but after I told her I’d found Amaryll and talked to him, she seemed to lose interest. Once she’d gone off to bed I rang Wyndham. Sarah answered. I said hello, asked for Wyndham, and he came on the line almost immediately. I told him I’d found our man, and followed on with what had been said. When I mentioned Amaryll’s alibi he swore angrily.

‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’

‘I wouldn’t bank on him lying about that,’ I said. ‘It was the one thing he wasn’t worried about. He’s really confident that he’s in the clear.’

‘What’s this alibi, then?’

‘He wouldn’t tell me. Not till he had some kind of deal. There’s something else as well.’

I told him Amaryll’s story about a nutter threatening Helen, and he perked up immediately.

‘Well, that’s better,’ he said. ‘That gives us another option.’

‘Not necessarily. He wants two grand.’

‘Bloody hell! I can’t do that.’

His reaction was about what I’d expected. Nick had approved the budget Wyndham wanted, but the costs had to be accounted for on a line by line basis. If a payment of two grand to an informant cropped up alarm bells would go off all over the place. Officially, the company would have to view it as an unethical practice, and if the case ever came to court, the evidence provided by a witness who’d been paid would be tainted.

‘So what do I tell him?’

‘Bargain with him,’ Wyndham said. ‘Haggle.’

‘You really want to do it?’

‘It will cause problems,’ he said, ‘but I can jiggle things about. Make it clear to him that whatever it is, we’re talking expenses here. From now on this is informal stuff, you get me?’

‘Suppose it comes to court? On appeal.’

‘We’ll worry about that later. If the thing gets on we’ll be long gone by the time it happens.’

‘So what do I tell him?’

‘Beat him down as much as you can, but tell him the final word is up to me. And get him to London. We can’t do this on the phone, and I can’t get away.’

‘That might be difficult.’

‘Listen,’ Wyndham said firmly. When he took that tone I could practically see the stubborn set of his jaw. ‘Tell the bugger it’s no pain no gain. Tell him we’ll pay his fares and put him up at a five-star hotel.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Of course I am. But once he’s here, what’s he going to do?’

That night I slept without any dreams that I could remember. When the telephone woke me I came to groaning, struggling reluctantly into a world full of sound and fury. Somewhere in the house Ida was shouting at someone.

‘We have to go back to London,’ I told Amaryll.

He didn’t like that, and he didn’t like my hemming and hawing about how much he’d get paid up.

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