‘Gone for the afternoon,’ she smiled. ‘Place is like a bloody ghost town.’
Erin waited until the lift doors hissed shut, then stepped into Marcus’s office and pulled the door behind her. Her palms instantly felt clammy the moment she entered, but she forced herself onwards, not really knowing what to look for, but feeling certain that the answer was in here. Marcus’s office was like Adam’s, only smaller. There was a row of expensive walnut shelving containing box files and property law books, back issues of Fortune magazine, big glossy coffee-table tomes on the great architects like Gehry, Rogers and Foster and, sitting on its own, in a silver frame, a picture of Marcus and Adam somewhere hot and sunny. They looked much younger and Adam had his arm around his friend’s shoulders. She picked it up and ran a finger over the glass, thinking. Marcus had given Adam his alibi, and in the process had given himself one; what if neither of them were where they said? Feeling more bold, she moved over to the desk, looking but not touching. It was a very ordered desk. Documents in neat piles. A black fountain pen sat at right angles next to a crystal paperweight. She glanced towards the door again, her ears straining to hear. Nothing. She opened the slim drawer at the top of the desk. More papers. Letters, bills and taxi receipts. And then she saw something. A wink of colour between leaves of white. She pulled it out between her thumb and forefinger and gasped. It was a picture of Marcus and Karin together. Karin was sitting next to Marcus by the swimming pool in Como, her head thrown back, laughing, her hand on Marcus’s knee, his expression one of pride and pleasure. Erin remembered thinking at the time how inappropriate it was for Karin to be flirting with Marcus.
What if he’d taken it the wrong way?
At that moment, the sun came out, sending a glare against the gloss of the photographic paper. Erin could see that it was smudged with fingerprints, as if it had been handled a hundred times. What if it was Marcus who had gone round to Karin’s house with his impressive, expensive bottle of red wine? Hadn’t witnesses reported seeing a grey sports car outside Karin’s around the time she was murdered? The police had assumed it was Molly, but Erin remembered the two vehicles sitting on the gravel of The Standlings at the summer party. Molly’s dolphin-grey Maserati and Marcus’s silver Jaguar. To a casual observer they could be the same car. She shut the door and hurried out of the room with the photograph.
69
When Mikhail Lebokov came to London he always threw a party, and when one of the richest men in the world throws a party, everyone makes sure they drop whatever they’re doing and attends.
Erin got out of the black cab and stood looking up at Chelsea’s exclusive new waterside development soaring into the sky. Although most super-rich Russians lived in townhouses in Belgravia, Kensington and Mayfair, Mikhail had bucked the trend by buying the most luxurious penthouse flat on London’s stretch of the Thames. Word was that it cost £50 million, also making it London’s most expensive apartment. She glanced at her watch, wondering whether there was time to try Michael Wright’s number again. She had called again only twenty minutes ago, and the officer answering the phone had assured her he was due back soon and would call her immediately. In the meantime she knew that she had to speak to Adam.
The lobby of Mikhail’s apartment block was the size of a tennis court, lined with walnut and beginning to fill with beautiful young women and immaculately dressed older men.
Two well-built men wearing charcoal suits and headsets stood by the chrome lift doors with clipboards, looking less like greeters and more like KGB bodyguards. Perhaps they were, thought Erin nervously.
Luckily Adam and Karin had been sent individual invitations, which had both been delivered to the Midas Corporation in a black lacquered box, so Erin had been able to pick up Karin’s invitation from the office. She fluttered it at the security guard, trying to stop her hand trembling. Clearly the man had never heard of Karin Cavendish and nodded her through. She watched in wonder as the glass lift sped up the outside of the building, London disappearing below her as they reached the penthouse on the fifteenth floor.
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The apartment was incredible. A huge bronze sculpture that Erin recognized as Henry Moore dominated the large hallway. Inside, it was a masculine flat, decorated in taupe and tobacco brown, with a few bursts of colour from some of the most famous artists of the modern era. Erin was no expert, but even she was impressed to see a Francis Bacon and a row of Andy Warhol’s ‘car crash’ silk-screens.
She walked through into an enormous lounge, sparsely furnished with a big black lacquered table, a bus-sized grey sofa and a six-foot-tall plasma screen. Tonight, however, the spaces were filled by the beautiful and powerful of London, laughing, drinking and chatting. Her eyes scanned the room for Adam, but all she saw were unfamiliar faces. This was not some show-off celebrity shindig, this was an exclusive gathering for Mikhail’s closet friends and business colleagues.
A waiter handed her a cocktail and she walked up a chrome and glass stairway clutching the ebony handrail. The crowds thinned out as she reached a mezzanine floor that led out onto a rooftop garden that echoed the Japanese theme of Mikhail’s dacha outside Moscow. Sculpted trees obscured the London skyline, koi carp swam in a black marble pool, while cherry-wood and cream linen day beds provided a place to sit. But it was too cold to linger this evening, and Erin quickly saw that she was alone up there. Cursing, she perched on a day bed, opened her mobile and dialled Adam’s number. It rang twice before he answered.
‘It’s Erin,’ she said sharply, ‘I need to speak to you urgently. I’m at Mikhail’s party – I thought you were going to be here.’
‘I’m on my way,’ said Adam, sounding bemused. ‘What’s the problem? What are you doing there?’
She paused a moment and then decided it was too late for keeping theories to herself. ‘I think I know who killed Karin, but I need to ask you a question and you have to answer honestly.’
‘Go on,’ said Adam cautiously.
‘Where were you really on Monday night?’
It was a few moments before he spoke. ‘I went to see Summer. But when I got there, there was no reply at her apartment, so I went home alone. I had no alibi so I asked Marcus to cover for me, to stop things getting complicated with the police.’
‘So you didn’t see Marcus all evening?’
‘Summer, what are you suggesting? That Marcus did it?’ he replied, sounding incredulous. ‘What on earth would make you think such a thing?’
‘I’ll explain later but I think Marcus did it. And try and get in touch with Chief Inspector Wright. I’m having no luck.’
She snapped her mobile shut, stood up and took a big swig of cocktail to calm herself.
‘I thought we were friends, Erin. That’s no way to go talking about friends, is it?’ said a voice behind her.
Erin whirled around to find Marcus was standing only feet away, a thin half-smile on his face.
‘Marcus, what a surprise, I didn’t think you’d be here …’ she stammered.
‘Clearly,’ he leered. ‘I’m a guest of Mikhail’s architect. And it’s a good job I came, isn’t it? Now you and I can have a private chat about the little lies you’ve been spreading about me.’
‘It’s nothing, Marcus, honestly,’ she said, wondering if he had heard the whole conversation. He grabbed her arm and ushered her further into the garden, into a long seating area, shielded from the house by clipped hedges.
Marcus pushed Erin roughly against a low wall on the edge of the roof and brought his face close to hers. ‘Now, why on earth would you think I’d do such a thing as to kill Karin?’