The Honey Trap

By Vivien Armstrong

Rowan Morley, big and beautiful, made quite a splash when she went overboard from a pleasure launch into the Thames. Fortunately help was at hand, but Rowan’s rescuers were bewildered when she insisted on denying the existence of what seemed to them a clearly murderous attack.

Even when she was whisked away to an Oxfordshire village to act as housekeeper to two hapless males, Rowan remained a focus of mystery. Meanwhile Aran Hunter, art restorer, chafed at his inability to protect her; Frederick Flowers retired civil servant, feared for her; Wayne Denny, general factotum of a fleet of Thames houseboats, lusted after her; and Inspector Laurence Erskine of Special Branch, now working with Interpol, found himself involved willy-nilly when he learned that Rowan’s previous employers were connected with a case he had been working on for months.

None of them, except perhaps Erskine, could believe this glorious girl was involved in international crime, but when murder struck close to home it became a matter of life and death to discover what Rowan Morley, wittingly or unwittingly, knew or possessed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9780008228392

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Littering the muddy shallows behind World’s End, dozens of small houseboats bob up and down on the tide like long discarded champagne corks. The long arm of Battersea Bridge encloses one side of the flotilla, the smart new towers of Chelsea Harbour posing against an orange sky enclose the other.

It is late evening in September. Warm as velvet. Two men relax on the deck of Christabel: one old, the other aggressively young with bleached hair, his tanned legs gracefully crossed in freshly laundered shorts.

‘Another, Frederick?’ The young one refills brandy glasses and they sink back, companionably silent, regarding the occasional passing of a launch upstream. High tide has raised the vessels by more than twelve feet as if to provide a better view. The Christabel rocks as if on tiptoe, ready to break anchor despite the solid pontoons.

The deck is scrubbed, pale boards evidence of a perfect summer, its perimeter hedged with neat window-boxes beyond which the oily swirl of the Thames slaps against the hull. The boat swings gently, rising and falling with soporific rhythm.

‘What time’s your appointment tomorrow, Frederick?’

‘Don’t you worry about me, my boy. I’ll push off about ten, give myself plenty of time. See myself off. Just routine tests, shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’d quite like to saunter up to the Arts Club after lunch. You’ve got plenty on, dare say?’

‘Nothing till three. I’ll drive you over to the clinic and drop you back at the club on the way back. It’s no trouble. I’ve got to check some locations in Regent’s Park. Tie up a few loose ends before I meet this chap. A photographer.’

‘Another book?’

‘Secret Interiors of Georgian London.’

Grimacing in mock dismay, the old man placed his glass on the burnished milk churn which served as a side table and lit his pipe.

‘Who buys these picture books, Simon?’

‘Illiterates.’

‘Sell well?’

‘Ever-expanding market of non-readers. Tourists, nosey-parkers, hairdressers. You’d be surprised.’

‘Not cheap, I’ll be bound.’

‘A bloody expensive business to set up,’ Simon countered defensively. ‘But the sort of thing that goes well in America, not just here.’

The old man drew on his pipe, ribbons of blue smoke disguising the faintly fetid smell of a turning tide. The sky had swiftly darkened, the merest wisps of coral flung against the silhouetted towers and roof lines. A bus, lit overall like a ferry boat, passed over the bridge now monumental with black shadows.

‘Want to go inside, Frederick? It’s getting chilly.’

His nephew’s concern was almost feminine in its solicitude. Decent of him, though, to put him up. Trips to London cost a packet without having to pay for a hotel bed as well.

‘Just finish my pipe, old boy. I know you don’t want my fug in your smart sitting-room. I had no idea how splended these houseboats were.’ Frederick Flowers turned to indicate the softly illuminated saloon. A walnut bookcase glowed beyond a small circular table still littered with the remains of their supper, lamplight blushing the pale mezzotints hung against the panelling.

‘Amazing what you’ve done with this old tub.’

Simon winced.

‘Quiet, too,’ the old man continued. ‘Is there no one aboard—’ he waved his pipe vaguely from side to side—‘these other boats?’

‘Excelsis belongs to some sort of pop star.’ Simon nodded towards the dark shape in the next berth. ‘Hardly ever there, uses it more as a party venue. But when he’s in town …’ He clapped his hands to his ears. ‘The racket’s unbelievable.’

‘The other side looks leaky as a colander.’

‘Just changed hands. Due for a complete refit.’

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘Mm.’ Simon began to shake out the cushions on the empty lounger. ‘Still works out cheaper than anything on shore. Especially round here. The mooring fee covers cleaning of the pontoons and the maintenance of the ropes and gangways. And the bottom of the vessel has to be scraped and tarred every five years or so, but all in all the running costs work out about the same as painting and decorating an ordinary house.’ He lifted his head, staring at the slabs and pinnacles of redevelopment sites on the opposite bank now shyly sprinkled with the first stars. ‘What I save living here enables me to run the farmhouse in Provence I was telling you about. Absolute heaven. You must come and stay in the spring, Frederick.’

Frederick had a soft spot for the boy. Funny bugger, he mused. Kind. Like Pris. But a sore disappointment to poor old Ned. He smiled. Serves him right. Mentally touching his bachelor state like a lucky charm, Frederick blessed his single life. He puffed away at his pipe, turning back to the plush darkness of the evening, mesmerized by the expanse of swirling water.

Simon rose, gathering the coffee cups to take inside.

‘I’ll just clear the table, Frederick, if there’s nothing else I can get for you. There’s a concert on three I’d like to catch. The Printemps String Quartet live from Shannon House.’ He flicked the stereo and the discordant expectancy of tuning-up broke in.

Frederick Flowers sank back into reverie, mulling over the check-up which had precipitated his trip. The prognosis was not good … No matter. A good run of it. Thank God I’ve still got all my faculties: good sight, a bit deaf but … His watery eyes skimmed the lights stringing the opposite bank, translating the unchanging simplicity of the Whistler riverscape laid out before him. An illuminated pleasure boat sharply outlined with fairy lights burst from the cavernous ramparts of the bridge. Heavy rock music pulsed across the river in a persistent jungle beat, the upper deck clearly visible, garishly clarified in the flash of disco lights.

Simon paused in the doorway and the two men watched the progress of the little boat, flat as a water beetle on the rising tide.

‘Not much of a party.’ Simon’s wry disapproval, primly in contrast to the old man’s eager scrutiny, struck a discordant note. ‘Nobody’s dancing,’ he explained.

Frederick craned forward to make out the partygoers in the brightly lit saloon below deck. A private do, he guessed, thinly attended but everyone clearly having fun. Some sort of game in progress. The pleasure boat chugged on passing upstream. Simon, smiling indulgently, produced a pair of binoculars for the old man, who swiftly applied himself to the disco boat.

‘Strip poker!’ he crowed.

Simon shrugged and moved to go back inside, hovering politely over the table as he cleared the plates, half attending to the old man’s enthusiastic commentary, straining to catch the opening chords of the Bach.

‘One’s had enough. Gone up on deck,’ Frederick said.

An amorphous shape in pale draperies leaned moth-like over the rail, spotlit by the alternate magenta and orange pulse of the strobe lighting.

‘Throwing up!’ he gasped, offering the binoculars to Simon. Shaking his head, the younger man moved as if to go back to the saloon, then found himself reluctantly hypnotized by the water pageant unfolding on the dance deck as it floated past. Below deck, the party was in full swing, two enthusiastically gyrating on what must be a coffee table, enticing glimpses of breast and gleaming shoulder visible above the heads of the others. Catcalls and rhythmic handclapping were clearly audible across the dark river, drowning the soaring opening bars of Simon’s radio concert.

Two men had followed the girl to the upper deck, one gripping her arms as her head rolled, doll-like, above the rail. An argument was obviously in progress. Despite himself, Simon found his attention riveted to the silent struggle of the girl who seemed to have passed out, supported by the second man, who, with appalling swiftness, slapped her face. Twice the ringing crack of his hand on her cheek sounded like rifle shots across the water. With a gasp Frederick witnessed the hoisting of the bundle of chiffon to the rail and the sudden disappearance of their victim over the side. No alarm was raised. The two men rejoined the party below deck. The boat chugged on, its music already absorbed by the continuous background noises of the river.

Frederick lurched to his feet, grasping Simon’s wrist, sagging with incredulity. The disco boat was vanishing into the darkness. A mirage? A trick of the flashing lights? Too much brandy?

The two stood rigid, disbelieving their own eyes. Simon snatched the binoculars and peered into the dark. The river flowed by, flecked with the wash from the pleasure boat. No sound rippled the surface. Their thoughts fused on the bizarre incident and the apparent unconcern of the men who perpetrated it.

‘I’ll phone the police,’ Frederick croaked, stumbling sideways in his effort to raise the alarm.

‘Bloody hell!’ Simon burst out. ‘She’s waving!’

The old man grabbed the binoculars and, wiping his eye, fumbled to refocus on the tide bobbing with the assorted debris of plastic cups and driftwood. Far out, carried along with the flotsam, a flurry of foam circled a raised arm hoisted almost negligently above the water. With disgust Frederick found ‘Excalibur’ trembling on his lips and, pushing away this superfluous imagery, grasped Simon’s shoulder. ‘I’ll ring 999 and get help. Is there a rowing-boat? A lifebelt? Anything?’ he wailed.

In despair, Simon recognized the dreadful certainty that there was no time to waste. He would have to go in after her. He kicked off his trainers and, lowering himself into the filthy river, struck out towards the flailing windmill into which the freezing water had transformed the languorous signal. Garbled shrieks now accompanied the white bundle which was already being carried along at a rate of knots.

Frederick, rooted to the deck, strained to follow the action, a warm trickle in his trousers reasserting the awful humiliation of his wretched ailment. Simon swam on strongly, finally reaching the gurgling victim and grabbing an inordinate length of hair which swirled in the scummy water like tentacles. He attempted to encircle her chest in the classic lifesaving style he vaguely remembered and fervently wished he had never been called upon to practise. The woman seemed to be ‘parcelled’. Huge wads of drapery immobilized her body but, concentrating all her energy in arms now clasping Simon in a steel embrace, her vibrant screams denied any possibility of water in the lungs. He wrestled with the octopus whose numberless arms churned in an apparent determination to drown him also.

Angrily, he applauded the justice of the man who had slapped her down in the first place. With a gesture resembling a half-nelson—something which the lifesaving manual had stupidly omitted—he at last managed to grasp the ample bosom. There seemed to be a lot of it. Weary with the struggle, he managed to move in the direction of the houseboat, towing his catch now blissfully inert. He hadn’t the energy to worry about this.

The old man was kneeling at the edge of the deck, having shoved one of the pretty window-boxes into the river. Between them they pushed and heaved the spluttering creature on board, where she lay coughing on the scrubbed boards. Simon dragged himself up, flopping back into a chair while Frederick dabbed the girl’s face with his handkerchief, murmuring encouragement over her heaving chest in a miscast tableau of Romance.

Simon watched the girl’s efforts to raise herself to spew up the last of the Thames, wiping her mouth with the corner of the trailing shroud. She sat up, bright-eyed, with the air of happy release of one who has been sick and feels better now, thank you. Pushing strands of wet hair off her forehead, she atempted to untangle the sodden winding sheet and released herself to wobble awkwardly towards the saloon. Frederick struggled to his feet, all concern, his town suit spattered with tarry flecks.

‘Is there a loo?’ she asked in level tones, her aplomb undented, the junoesque figure entirely filling the doorway.

Simon wearily indicated below deck and the girl stepped inside, taking the spiral staircase in her stride, disappearing below like an over-ample water nymph. Slimy pools marked her progress across Simon’s Persian rug. He sighed, feebly patting the old man’s arm as Frederick emptied tots from the decanter into the miraculously intact balloon glasses.

After a decent interval in which they debated in urgent undertones the question of calling the police, the two men decided they really must first consult their uninvited guest. Perhaps they had misinterpreted the scene—the poor girl accidentally falling overboard in her struggle to disentangle herself from her escorts. After all, it was dusk, almost dark in fact …

Ever anxious to avoid unpleasantness, Simon Alington’s insistence on consulting her grew desperate. Frederick motioned his nephew to lower his voice and, emptying his brandy glass, miserably contemplated his damp trousers. At any other time the embarrassment would have been of epic proportions but eyeing the muddy disfigurement of chairs and polished floorboards, not to mention Simon’s sodden state, Frederick slyly concluded his own predicament would certainly go by the board just this once.

Simon rose stiffly, rancorously surveying the chaos in the cabin. He straightened the rug, flicking ineffectually at trails of what looked like electric blue plastic spaghetti. The string quartet, blithely winging its way through the Bach, lent an air of the Titanic to the wretched circumstances of Simon’s carefully planned interior.

He disappeared below. Frederick moved silently to the stairs, listening intently to firstly hesitant polite tapping on the bathroom door, then more urgent blows and finally, in exasperation, a loud ‘Excuse me!’ as Simon barged in.

Frederick leaned over, peering down, excited at the prospect of more drama. Simon emerged and looking up, called, ‘Frederick, you’ll have to help me. The silly cow’s passed out.’

They heaved at the heavy bundle, wedged between bath and basin, her hair spread across the floor as if in a Roman mosaic. Eventually, they managed to shove twelve stones of inert femininity into Simon’s double bed, too exhausted to wrestle with the problem of the wet chiffon dress. Anyhow, it already seemed not only almost dry but billowing in creaseless folds about her.

Frederick’s breath laboured in painful gasps, this last piece of exertion almost, but not quite, dissolving the vision of swelling flesh escaping it seemed in all the right places. She was out cold, lightly snoring, her lips parted in soft exhalations. Oh dear me, Frederick, acknowledged, Mayerton is going to seem a very dull ditch after this little lot.

CHAPTER 2

Simon slept badly, haunted by a recurrent nightmare in which he was trapped in a bottle bobbing on a vast ocean. There must be a message in all this: ‘Help’ perhaps? Wedged on the small sofa, gloomily aware of a faint smell of bilge pervading the Christabel he reached for his Rolex. Eight-fifteen! He crept down to the bathroom, inevitably occupied, presumably by his uninvited guest, Frederick’s snoring being clearly audible from the spare cabin.

He sidled into the main cabin and withdrew a clean shirt and cords, grimly noting the tumble of muddy bedclothes and the froth of discarded chiffon tossed in the corner. The bathroom door spun open, and the girl appeared, fresh and smiling as a society hostess, quite unabashed.

‘Good morning! It’s all yours.’ She stood aside with a flourish of welcome.

He nodded curtly, noting her acquisition of his new denim shirt and the rolled-up cotton trousers he had bought for Cowes Week, and pushed past without a word. If she had used all the hot water he would certainly throw her back overboard.

When he emerged, feeling considerably less barbaric after a bath and shave, a wonderful aroma of fresh coffee and bacon obliterated the musty stink of Thames water which the previous night’s adventure had introduced. Frederick appeared looking frail, wearing a dressing-gown voluminous as a horse blanket and a sickly air of anxiety. He moved towards the upper deck. ‘She still here?’ he whispered.

Before Simon could reply the girl’s voice rang out, cheerful as a wedding bell. ‘Roll up, coffee’s ready.’ Her head appeared over the stair rail. ‘Come on, just as you are, I’ve done a full grill job.’

The two men’s confusion left no alternative but to toe the line. Frederick bunched the dressing-gown to his chest and ascended, Simon at his heels crossly aware of feeling a visitor aboard his own boat.

To give the girl her due, she was a quick worker. The saloon had been whisked to rights, the table laid, coffee steaming, and sunlight sparkling through the open hatches danced about Simon’s brass knick-knacks. Even the trails of plastic debris had been eliminated, the rug still damp from a brisk set-to and all evidence of the near-drowning utterly erased.

Simon, taciturn, merely grunted, but Frederick quickly responded to the girl’s unstoppable sprightliness and introduced himself.

‘So you are Frederick,’ she prattled, ‘And you’re—?

‘Simon Alington.’

‘And Simon’s staying here for—’

‘It’s Simon’s boat.’ Frederick almost choked on his bacon in his urgency to divert Simon’s rancour.

‘Oh good.’ She smiled across the table at him. ‘I had to borrow some clothes, Simon. You don’t mind?’

It was hardly a question. Would he tell her to strip? Simon laid down his fork and finished his coffee.

‘This is all very well, Miss—’

‘Morley. Rowan Morley. Ro to my friends.’

‘Miss Morley. But you seem to have been the victim of a murderous attempt on your life. We must call the police. That is,’ he added lamely, ‘unless you can enlighten us?’

‘Murderous attempt?’ She laughed, throwing back her head, struggling with the preposterousness of such a suggestion.

‘You mean my falling overboard? I