Murder in Hampstead by Sabina Manea (read this if txt) 📕

‘Just Danny, now I think of it. They don’t spend too long together normally. Just a swift pint and Danny’s off. Adam’s the one who hangs around afterwards, drowning his sorrows. Speak of the devil. Pint of IPA, Adam?’

Adam crawled in with his usual funereal look. He briefly acknowledged Lucia, but his eyes were glazed over, like he was in a trance. ‘Thanks, Becky. I’m just going to sit down and do some work. Do you mind bringing it over?’

Lucia wondered what sort of work this was. He didn’t have a laptop or notebook with him.

‘Told you. That man’s got guilt written all over his face.’ Becky had cast herself as the lady detective, and she clucked with delight. ‘Only a matter of time till he goes down. Better bring him his pint. One of his last.’ For all her practised façade, her childish delight betrayed the fact that she was still very young.

Distracted by Becky’s career aspirations, Lucia failed to notice Adam had been on the phone all this time. The conversation had started out as civilised, but before too long he was hissing angrily, doing his best to keep his voice down to avoid being heard. His sallow face had been upgraded to an aubergine shade of purple and was dotted with sweat. Lucia thought she could make out a meaningless ‘What was I supposed to do?’ He put the phone down and slurped his nearly full pint before heading to the toilet.

Becky’s mouth was half open with a logically faultless interpretation of Adam’s predicament when she was interrupted by the slam of the door behind the bar. The landlady was out of her lair, scanning her surroundings with the meticulousness of a sniper. She narrowed in on her target and poured herself a large glass of the Burgundy.

‘Lucia, how wonderful to see you. It’s been too long. How have you been holding up? Such a nasty business at Beatrice Hall. You must be traumatised.’

Leila was mad as a box of frogs at the best of times. By all accounts, she was wholly within her rights – better a dipsomaniac in Hampstead than under house arrest in the Middle East. She prided herself on only having spent one of her nine lives, namely when she packed up a bag and fled across the Turkish border in the early 1980s. What happened before she left and how she lived since arriving in London were bottomless sources of inconsistent stories. She never spoke of the part in between. The most enduring relic of her origins was her dress sense, an unrepentant tribute to one of the more culturally insensitive Carry On films.

‘I’m fine. Horrible business, Becky and I were just saying.’

Leila draped herself theatrically on the bar and inhaled most of the glass in one fell swoop. ‘They say it was’ – she paused for maximum effect, fixing them with dilated pupils under the heavy make-up – ‘MURDER!’ She took a deep breath and squinted. ‘I remember another case like it, up by the ponds. Woman was found hacked to death in her own house. Perhaps a serial killer is on the loose.’ Her eyes widened – if any further widening was physically possible. ‘We shouldn’t be out and about. We could be in mortal danger!’

This was ridiculous even by Leila’s standards. The stock of Burgundy must be nearly depleted at this rate, thought Lucia.

‘I wouldn’t worry, babe. It looks like it was one of her own that did her in.’ Becky was back in the game and eager to publicise her deductions. ‘I reckon it’s Adam.’

Leila nodded frantically in approval, as thrilled as Cleopatra before her milky bath. ‘Of course! So clever of you, Becky. He’s got that look about him. Shifty and intense. He must be the mass murderer.’

Lucia didn’t want to point out that the chances of a serial killer being on the loose were close to nil. The incident of the dead woman that Leila brought up was undoubtedly macabre and had made the rounds in the neighbourhood. However, since there was no way the police could have charged a starving Alsatian, the case – along with the unfortunate animal – had been put to rest.

Before a more plausible version of the Professor’s death could be put forward, the women were interrupted by Adam returning from his excursion. ‘Can I get another, please?’

‘Coming right up,’ Becky said. ‘I’m with you, Leila. I bet he’s not right in the head. A psychopathic mass murderer.’

As Becky and Leila continued exchanging increasingly fantastical theories, Lucia watched him. The pallor was still there, but he seemed revitalised. He focused intently on the screen of his phone, his foot tapping under the table. The shrill ring of her own device startled her. It was Carliss. She decided she would let it go through to voicemail. She didn’t want to risk talking to him with an audience, even with Becky and Leila engrossed in their respective monologues. No sooner had the ringing stopped that she listened to his message.

‘Hi, Miss Steer. Hope I didn’t keep you up too late the other night. Sorry to call you on a Sunday, but I thought you’d want to know. I’ve just got off the phone to forensics. There was no poison of any kind in the champagne. Not on the Professor’s glass, nor anywhere else. Seems like we were on the wrong track all along. Meet me at Beatrice Hall tomorrow morning, first thing. We need to get to the bottom of this.’

Chapter 10

In the morning, on the narrow road outside Beatrice Hall, life was carrying on undisturbed. Couriers, builders, parents, nannies and children scooted past, unsuspecting, unaware. The van screeched to a halt and was expertly manoeuvred into an impossibly tight spot right in front of the house. It narrowly missed an offensively