Quick and the Dead

by Susan Moody

  ‘Friends? Somewhere she might feel safe?’

  He frowned, holding his mug against his face. Pursed his lips. Shook his head gently from side to side. ‘Funny thing: I’ve never thought about it before, but I don’t think Helena has a whole heap of friends. Apart from you.’ Head on one side again. ‘I assume you are friends …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But it’s kind of surprising how, well, lonely she is, considering how in-your-face she comes across. How … joyous.’

  Joyous … it summed her up precisely.

  Was I joyous? Had I ever been?

  ‘She does have friends,’ I said, defensive for Helena. ‘She was out with some of them a few nights ago.’

  ‘Of course. So she was. She invited me to come along but I had a previous engagement.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’ I stared bleakly at Perry Nutley, beset by images of my friend locked into a home-made coffin, or kept in a wheelie bin, or hanging upside down in some sadistic pervert’s cellar.

  No! Don’t think such thoughts. Back in my car, I drove to my parents’ house. Despite their peculiarities, I felt in need of their common sense take on life, after the events of the past couple of days.

  And what about Ainslie Gordon? He was one of the Bright Old Things of the current scene, famously eccentric, reclusive, eschewing any event which could be described as arty, rarely giving interviews, refusing all invitations to speak, to teach or to accept awards and prizes. Why had Helena concealed this relationship from me?

  I was aware that he lived in the south of France. Was it possible she had gone down there? If there was no alternative, and other lines of enquiry had petered out, I thought, with a guilty frisson of pleasure, that a trip to the Dordogne might be called for.

  SIX

  Arriving at my parents’ red-brick Queen Anne house, I walked up the path, rang the doorbell, at the same time letting myself into the square hall and calling out. The objects, the pictures, the furniture had not changed appreciably since I was a child. Some watercolours of flowers painted by my grandmother. A small set of shelves holding books. A hideous vase which looked like melted vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on top. A fine, if battered, inlaid walnut drop-leaf table. An illuminated family tree, showing my father Edred’s lineage as far back as a thirteenth- or fourteenth-century knight of Norman extraction called Elaward de Cuike.

  I walked into the kitchen, where my parents were seated in creaking basket-chairs on either side of a wood-burning stove. Something in the kitchen was either charred or had been.

  ‘Have a productive time at your meeting the other day?’ Mary Quick – my mother – asked perfunctorily, glancing through the Guardian as she spoke. Tall, angular, unfeminine, and detached to the point of disengagement as far as her family was concerned, she was the least maternal mother that could be imagined. Nonetheless, all three of her children knew that if it came to it, she would swim piranha-infested waters for them, crawl across broken beer bottles, face down any number of rabid panthers armed only with an umbrella.

  ‘Good in parts.’ I could do detachment as well.

  ‘Curate’s egg stuff, eh?’ said Edred, shuffling through the Daily Mail.

  ‘What’s the bad bit?’ Mary, a sufferer from a terminal drop at the end of her nose, sniffed, noisily turning the page of her paper.

  ‘Helena has vanished.’ To my dismay, I felt weak tears at the back of my throat.

  ‘Has she done this before?’

  ‘I doubt she makes a habit of it,’ I said drily. ‘She’s certainly not gone missing since we’ve been working together. But it’s worse than that … on my way back from the meeting, I stopped in at her house and …’ Voice shaking, I outlined my discovery in Helena’s bedroom.

  ‘How frightful!’ Attention caught, both my parents stared at me. Over time, they had struck up a close friendship with Helena, who was nearer to their age than she was to mine. ‘How appalling!’

  ‘You must be extremely …’ My father struggled judiciously to find a word that would convey sympathy alongside common sense. ‘… concerned.’ He got up and fetched a glass, which he filled with Cabernet Sauvignon from a box, and passed across the table. ‘Tell us the whole story,’ he said.

  So I did, alternately sipping from the glass he kept refilling, and wiping my eyes.

  ‘Where can she have gone?’ my mother asked.

  ‘I can’t imagine. I’m not sure I want to imagine.’ I sniffed. ‘Actually, I thought she might have come here.’

  Both of them shook their heads.

  ‘Any idea who the dead body belongs to?’ my father asked.

  ‘Last night, they still hadn’t identified it,’ I said. ‘But maybe they have by now.’ Belatedly remembering the unanswered call on my mobile while I was talking to Perry Nutley at the university, I fished out my phone. DS Fairlight had sent me a text: You were right! ‘Oh goodness … yes, they know who it is.’

  ‘And are you going to tell us?’ My mother dabbed at the end of her long aristocratic nose with a screwed-up piece of tissue.

  ‘If they’re right, it’s Amy Morrison.’

  ‘What? The art historian whose launch you went to a couple of months or so ago?’

  ‘I’m not quite up to speed here.’ Edred frowned. ‘You’re saying you let yourself in to Helena’s house because she hadn’t shown up at a business meeting you’d set up, and then you found this Amy Morrison woman lying murdered in Helena’s bedroom?’

  ‘Exactly. Though I didn’t know it was Amy at the time.’

  ‘Forgive me for asking,’ Mary said, ‘and you know how very fond we are of Helena, but is there any likelihood that she could be responsible for this death?’

  I shook my head vigorously from side to side. ‘Absolutely none whatsoever.’ If there was one thing I could be firm about, it was this.

  ‘I agree with you,’ my father said. ‘I can’t imagine her mixed up in murder.’

  ‘Do you think she even knows about this body in her house?’ asked Mary.

  ‘It’s quite possible that she doesn’t,’ I said. ‘But the police aren’t going to believe that. In fact, I know that they don’t believe it.’

  ‘So they’re making every effort to find her.’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. As a matter of urgency. Completely ignoring the fact that it could be— that it must be someone else entirely.’

  ‘On the other hand, maybe she was in the house when this woman was killed, and the killer then abducted her.’

  ‘That’s actually what I’m afraid of,’ I said.

  I looked at them both with approval. As a child, I might have lost out on the smell of home-baked cookies, the hand-sewn zombie costume for the Hallowe’en party, the swimming and bike-riding lessons. On the other hand, I had parents who were always keen to discuss and evaluate any proposition or problem that I laid before them. Not only to evaluate, but very often to come up with some sort of resolution.

  ‘If we assume that Helena is innocent – and I too cannot imagine her getting violent to the degree that you’ve described – then it seems to me that what the police need to do is establish who might have wanted to get rid of this Amy Morrison,’ said Mary. ‘Thus letting Helena off the hook.’

  ‘I’ve already decided that’s the best thing I can do.’

  ‘Even though you’d probably be covering some of the same ground as the police?’

  ‘If that’s what they’re intending to do, then yes. But it looks as though they’re concentrating most of their efforts on finding Helena so that they can arrest her for murder, rather than on the victim. At least for the present. So if I can get in first …’

  ‘There’s nothing in my paper about this woman’s death,’ said Mary, sipping coffee. The steam from her cup made her nose turn an almost translucent red.

  ‘Nor mine,’ added Edred. Stanley, his mangy old cat, jumped onto his knee and he stroked it, murmuring sweet nothings.

  ‘So it doesn’t look like the Press are on to
it yet,’ Mary said.

  ‘And there was nothing on the radio about it, either.’ I frowned. Not that it was likely to hit the headlines, since the average punter on the street probably wouldn’t be all that interested in the death, however violent, of some obscure art historian who wrote about an even more obscure (to the uninitiated) Quattrocento Italian artist. Nonetheless, I would have thought that given the circumstances of the murder (pretty woman, been on the telly, found semi-naked with punctured eyes and her face beaten in), the down-market newspapers might have found room somewhere for a salacious paragraph or two. So my mother was right: it looked as though the police were still sitting on it and had not yet released the details.

  More worrying – and a cold chill of apprehension crept across the back of my neck at the recollection – was Helena’s conviction that she was being stalked, and my own light-hearted response to what I had considered little more than her drama-queen posturing. Perhaps she really had been stalked, and the guy had now snatched her off the street in order to act out his sick sexual fantasies. I didn’t want to go there. If only I had made Helena tell me more, instead of cutting her short.

  ‘So what’s your next step?’ my mother asked.

  ‘I’m going to make some enquiries in London. Stay with Hereward.’

  ‘Hereward?’

  ‘Your son.’

  ‘Oh, that Hereward,’ said my father. As though the streets of London teemed with men called Hereward.

  ‘Does he know?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Not yet.’ I shook my head affectionately as I looked at the two of them. Edred had been a journalist on one of the nationals; Mary had taught chemistry and physics at a local girls’ school. Warm and loving, in the traditional sense, they were not. But both had a keen interest in things cultural: art, music, literature, for which I was deeply grateful. When I was a child in this huge cold house, there were always books lying about the place, particularly books of paintings, thick catalogues of exhibitions, studies of individual painters, all of which I had read and reread as I grew up, and which had undoubtedly steered me towards my current career.

  Back in my own flat, I put in a call to my brother. ‘Herry, it’s your little sister,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want?’ Like my parents, there was no beating about the bush with Hereward Quick.

  ‘I need to spend a few days in London.’

  ‘Yes, the basement flat is empty, if that’s what you mean. When do you want it?’

  ‘Immediately. Well, this evening, anyway.’ Briefly I outlined my reasons.

  ‘It’s yours for as long as you want it. You’ve got the key. Go in and make yourself at home. Lana’s in Morocco for the week.’

  ‘Herry, you are a star.’

  ‘I know.’ He put down the phone.

  I called him back. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you know someone called Lamont?’

  ‘The art-collector guy? No, never met him.’

  ‘What about Gillon Drew?’

  ‘The gallery man? Matter of fact, Lana and I were at a rather exclusive bash he threw last week.’

  ‘What’s your opinion of him?’

  ‘An arse-licker. But got his finger on the pulse …’

  ‘An unpleasant image, I must say.’

  ‘He mentioned you when I told him my name, asked if I was any relation. It was in connection with one of your anthologies. Seemed rather impressed when I said you were my sister.’

  ‘A man of taste and discernment.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘So you won’t mind if I use your name to weasel my way into his confidence.’

  ‘If it’ll do you any good, be my guest.’ Again the call was abruptly ended. Herry didn’t do chat.

  I sat at the table and thought. In my years as a senior cop, I had often found that twenty minutes of concentrated thinking was worth several hours of faffing about. Eyes closed, hands relaxed in my lap, I reviewed the time Helena and I had attended the Morrison launch party. Some of the attendees were completely unknown to me, though not, apparently, to Helena, since I’d watched her drifting purposefully from group to group, always greeted with the obligatory mwah-mwah kiss, the friendly arm-rubbings.

  The fabulously rich Lamonts were one couple it might be useful to contact. Another was Gillon Drew, owner/director of a small private gallery in Chelsea. There was the guy from Amy’s publisher, of course, Donald Lewis, if I remembered his name correctly. And a strange woman with a US-army-inspired haircut and a red leather onesie, who had been hovering proprietorially round Amy, like Bo-Peep who’d just recovered her sheep and didn’t want to lose them again. An art critic, if I remembered rightly. Or was she the one from Rome who was mentioned in Amy’s extensive list of acknowledgements: Senorita Graziella Montenegro? I couldn’t see that any of them were likely to have murdered Amy in Canterbury, or have any clue as to where Dr Helena Drummond might be, but I wrote their names down.

  The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Helena could have vanished voluntarily. And with that fact in place, my earlier tentative conclusions crystallized. If Helena was aware of the body in her house, she would have notified the police. If she wasn’t, it could only mean that she had not seen it and, very likely, was now somewhere she had not intended to be.

  Before I left for London, I walked down to Willoughby’s bookshop. Even though Christmas was fast approaching, it was quiet in there, close to the end of the day, mums gone to pick kids up from school, such students as were still around already preparing to go clubbing or down the pub. Sam Willoughby’s assistant had gone home for the day and he himself was at the till, reading a book which he shoved into a drawer when I came in.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ I said, waving a hand.

  ‘Indeed I do mind you,’ he said. ‘It seems far too long a time since you were last in here.’ He glanced up at the clock on the wall behind him. ‘How about a cuppa?’

  ‘Sounds good. A mugga would be even better.’

  ‘Workman’s tea, isn’t it? Coming right up.’

  Over tea, he asked how my wacky friend, Dr Drummond, was. I bit my lip. ‘I’d tell you, if I knew.’ Once again I briefly outlined such details as I had about Helena’s disappearance.

  ‘So now you’re trying to find out more about Madame Masaccio.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where are you going to start?’

  ‘By talking to people.’ I lifted my mug, which was labelled KEEP CALM AND BUY A BOOK. ‘I don’t know anything about the woman. As a matter of fact, I realize I don’t know much about Doctor Drummond, either.’ Was this because I had become as detached from other people as my own mother, something I had always vowed would never happen, or because Helena didn’t give much information away?

  ‘As it happens, I was reading the foreword to Morrison’s book a couple of days ago,’ Sam said. ‘But it wasn’t big on autobiographical detail – though you wouldn’t expect it to be. It mentioned her professional career – which was extremely short, I must say – and that was about it. I even looked her up on the internet. You usually get something in the front or back of a book, a small paragraph headed “About The Author”. But there was nothing about her personal background. Mysterious origins, I would say.’

  ‘In other words, origins she wished to conceal. Though we do know she was at art school, because Doctor Drummond was her tutor, for a semester, at any rate.’

  ‘And that she got an MA, according to the back flap of her book, though it doesn’t say where.’

  ‘I wonder what she did when she wasn’t writing about Masaccio.’

  ‘Went hither and yon – wrote columns for the arty-farty journals, gave lectures, that sort of thing. Got married and moved away. Who knows? But this book will certainly have put her back on the map.’

  ‘And now it’s all too late, poor woman.’ I lifted my mug again. ‘Thing is, somebody wanted her dead, and it wasn’t my friend Helena.’

  ‘So who was
it?’

  ‘That’s precisely what I need to find out.’

  A customer pushed open the door of the shop, sending the old-fashioned bell fixed to a spring above the door into a frenzy of clanging. Sam got up. ‘Best of luck with the hunt, Alex. Keep me up to speed, won’t you? And if there’s anything I can do …’

  What could he do? What could anyone do? From the way Helena had spoken of her, there might be plenty of people who had cause to dislike Amy Morrison. But to want to butcher her … that argued a pathological hatred. And much as one might dislike another person, however often one might say, Oh I really hate him or her, genuine hatred, segueing into violence was something rarely encountered. So, unless I was being unduly optimistic, the field of suspects should be small. All I had to do was eliminate those who couldn’t have done it and the last one standing would have to be the perp. Once he was found, Helena could come back, assuming she was still a free individual.

  I walked to the station, my bag slung across my shoulder. Change of underwear, minimal make-up, toothbrush, alternative outfit. No way did I intend to take a car into central London.

  Once I reached my brother’s house in Oakley Street, I trod carefully down the treacherous frosty steps to the basement flat and let myself in. Not luxurious, but pleasantly furnished with the kind of fittings that students couldn’t damage – though Hereward and Lana only took PhD students from the LSE, preferably the older married ones, in order to minimize the wild parties and all-night drinking sessions.

  Someone (Herry’s Portuguese housekeeper?) had thoughtfully turned on the heating and put fresh milk, bread, butter and marmalade on the counter in the galley kitchen. I made tea, then sat down at the telephone which stood on a small table.

  ‘Drew Gallery,’ a voice said.

  ‘My name is Quick and I’d like to see Mr Drew as soon as possible,’ I said.

  ‘May I ask what it’s in connection with?’

  Which name would have the greatest effect: Amy’s, Helena’s, Hereward’s? Remembering Drew’s behaviour at the launch party, I went for the first one as more likely to yield a positive result. ‘It’s to do with Amy Morrison,’ I said.