This seemed to be confirmed the following morning. It was our last day at sea, and we were due to dock at 1 p.m., GMT. From breakfast onwards she seemed more tense, more often to be found standing at the prow than at the stern. We had entered the Channel.
I tested it out, still probing. ‘What happens if you don’t get back in time?’ I asked.
I had slipped quietly to her side at the rail. Perhaps she hadn’t realized. Her head whipped round, and abruptly there was dark fear in those grey eyes, at once disappearing. She did one of her elaborate shrugs.
‘They’ll write me out of the script. Should be easy,’ she told me sourly, the wind whipping at the silk scarf she had round her neck. ‘The last episode we’ve taped ... oh, there was all the drama and emotion you could wish for. I’d got a lover, you see. In the script. Am I making myself clear?’ she demanded.
‘Indeed you are. As the boss-lady you’d have packs of lovers.’
She eyed me suspiciously, then tossed her head. ‘As long as you understand. My lover… he’d just been found dead in his burnt-out auto at the bottom of a cliff. That gave me a good long hysterical scene...’
‘Top of the drawer acting,’ I put in.
‘What?’
‘I thought — it would take all your acting ability, you being hysterical.’
‘Oh? Explain yourself.’
‘You told me. This character you play, she’s all fire and brimstone. She would never indulge in hysteria.’
‘But she would! She would. You don’t understand her at all. In business she’s cold and tough, a fighter. But underneath she’s all emotion, all warmth and love, and… and...’
‘Sex?’
‘Yes, damn you.’
‘I can imagine. Which was what it’d been with this character in the burnt-out car! Yes, I see it now. Of course you’d be hysterical. I would myself.’
‘Will you please try to separate the character from the actor!’
I grinned at her. ‘That’d be for you, Roma.’ And I wasn’t sure how far the character had taken possession of the woman, or I’d have called her Bella. ‘But you were saying: that last episode in the series...’
It was several seconds before she dragged her eyes from mine. Perhaps I’d hit too close. Then at last, ‘You’re so blasted difficult to talk to, Philipa Lowe. We’re talking about acting, here. Acting.’
‘So tell me. You had a splendid hysterical scene —’
‘Then I got in my own auto and drove at an insane speed to the cliff where he’d died, and the show closed with the credits running over a shot of my Cadillac driving straight at the cliff edge.’
‘Dramatic,’ I said. Corny, I thought. ‘And so?’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘And so… what happens next?’
‘How would I know? Use your intelligence, if you’ve got any. I’ll get back and grab a script, and then I’ll know.’
‘Guess,’ I suggested. ‘For poor, stupid Philipa.’
Once more there was a hint of her smile. We were for the moment tuned to the same wavelength. ‘I’d scream to a skidding halt a yard from the cliff edge, and bury my face in my hands. Tears for him, my lost lover, and tears for myself because I hadn’t had the guts to follow him over the cliff, and because I hadn’t loved him enough for that, after all… and then, head high, a sniff, an expression of firm resolution. Colossus needs me, broken heart and all… and a close-up of my hand engaging reverse. Fade. For God’s sake, woman, use your imagination!’
‘And you’d convey all that without dialogue?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
‘Clever you. And the alternative, if you don’t get back in time?’
‘Hah!’ She loved to use her bark of derision. ‘They simply write me out. There’d be a funeral. Mine. They wouldn’t need me for it. And a new head for Colossus. Probably that bastard, Jay Messenger.’
‘What a fascinating life it is, this acting business.’
‘It’s tooth and nail,’ she said bitterly. ‘Damn it all, look at the time. I’ll have to go and pack. What about you?’
My turn to shrug. ‘All done. I like to watch the coast getting closer.’
Then she walked away. There’d been no exchange of addresses; neither of us could offer one. There had been no expressions of mutual affection, even muted, no sorrow that we might never see each other again.
Disembarking, I saw nothing of her. I was far too busy to look for her, anyway. The Customs people were very thorough, and the luggage search was comprehensive, and though I wasn’t too heavily encumbered with cases - most of my stuff was coming over as freight - I was caught by a specially suspicious official, who ransacked every item I had. Perhaps I looked like a smuggler.
When I eventually fought myself free I reckoned I’d be lucky to find a taxi. But there was one at the kerb. I assumed it was a taxi, because there was Bella/Roma just getting in, though it seemed unusual that the driver should be helping her into the rear seat, with a hand on her arm. Then I saw that the driver was still sitting behind the wheel, and that the one with his hand on her arm was using a fair amount of force.
I abandoned my trolley and began to run. ‘Heh!’ I shouted. Flashes of thought skittered through my mind. Kidnap! A rival TV company, crippling the opposition! ‘Hey, you there!’ I cried.
For a second the man looked round. His hand flashed inside his jacket. It couldn’t be, I thought, couldn’t be! And it wasn’t. His hand emerged holding a leather folder. He flicked it open with one finger, and waved it beneath my nose. I recognized it as an identity card of some kind.
‘Police,’ he said severely. ‘Keep out of this, ma’am, if you please.’
Then he was thrusting her inside, and she managed no more than one quick glance back at me. The door slammed and they pulled away. No screaming tyres. This wasn’t television, it was for real. And all I could remember was the look in Bella’s eyes. She was an expert at conveying emotion without dialogue.
‘Help me,’ the eyes had said. ‘Help me.’
I felt her mirror glasses crunch beneath my feet.
Chapter 2
For a few moments there was panic. My mind wouldn’t focus, couldn’t accept it. Half an hour on British soil and she’d been picked up by the police! But why should I care? We were shipboard acquaintances, and these relationships normally remain transient. ‘We’ll keep in touch.’ But nobody ever does. Yet I recalled her peculiar unease. She had been expecting something. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to become involved.
I went back to where I’d left my luggage trolley, secured a taxi without too long a wait, and directed him to the police station. It made a change for him, no doubt.
‘Police?’ he asked.
‘Please.’
He dropped me outside, and a young copper in uniform helped me into Reception with my stuff. ‘Come to stay, have you?’ he asked. I couldn’t work up a smile.
Neither could the desk sergeant, a bluff and experienced officer who’d seen it all, and wasn’t impressed by my contribution.
‘Not us,’ he told me.
‘Well, who then?’ I demanded. ‘You ought to realize - I have to know. He said he was from the police, but how can I be sure? It might have been a kidnapping. You never know.’
‘Important, is she?’
‘She’s the star of Colossus,’ I said in an awed voice, and he reached for a phone, whispered and nodded, and replaced it. ‘It’s quite in order, ma’am,’ he said. ‘It was the police. Official.’ ‘Then can I see her?’
‘Not us. They were from Shropshire. Their case - their men.’
I stared blankly at him. ‘Their case? What case?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Must be important, though, or they’d have asked us to pick her up.’
‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Yes.’ My mind felt like cotton wool. ‘Where can I hire a car, d’you think?’
‘Just down the road.’ He gestured. ‘Coupla hundred yards.’
&nbs
p; I looked round helplessly at my clutter of luggage, three suitcases and a bulky canvas thing with shoulder straps. ‘Can I leave this lot here?’
Straight-faced he said, ‘Might get ‘em pinched.’
I sighed. Funny-man. But my constable was right behind me. ‘I’ll help you, miss.’
He led the way with one case in each hand and one under his arm. I struggled after him, hunching a shoulder to keep the straps on. Two hundred yards, the sergeant had said. It seemed more like half a mile.
The constable dumped his load in front of the hire office. I thanked him. ‘It’s been a pleasure.’ He saluted, just like the old-time coppers, and departed. A young man with a bright future, but perhaps not in the police.
I signed for a neat little Rover 213, after I’d assured the young lady I could drive on the left. Was my accent becoming American, I wondered? But my driving licence is British, so everything was legal. I loaded my luggage on to the back seat, consulted the map they supplied, and got going. It had begun to rain. Fortunately, I could do the whole trip without using motorways, which are bad enough in dry weather and pure misery when it’s wet. By this time I was hungry, having missed lunch, so I called in at a fast-food production line, swallowed something I couldn’t recognize, and pushed on.
It turned out to be about a hundred and eighty miles to Shrewsbury, over two hundred when I found Horseley Green, which was barely more than a tiny dot on the map. But it rated more than that, a sprawl of a town in a green and lush valley. Hence the name, I supposed. I halted on the rise, looking down on it, the view not very clear because the light was going and because the rain was now a fine drizzle. Probably it had been, and still might be, a marketing centre, but on the outer reaches there were buildings that had to be factories, they were so ugly and graceless. I drove down, slowly now, eyes busy to get the general atmosphere. Yes, factories, one of those battery hen places I detest, and an agricultural machinery distribution point, a tannery, and a fertilizer manufacturer. One would know they were there when the wind was right. On the far edge of the town a large building crowded the slope, with a ghostly tall chimney puffing gloomy grey smoke into the mist.
I began to wonder whether I’d made a mistake. Perhaps they hadn’t brought her here, but to Shrewsbury, or to regional HQ, which wouldn’t necessarily be in the county town. But I had to start from somewhere. Slowly, I drove into the town centre.
There was, in fact, a Green with its pond, fed and drained by a tiny stream that ran in a culvert under the main street. They treasured their Green; it was surrounded by an iron, spiked fence. The town centre was large enough to boast a Sainsbury’s, a Woolworth’s and a small arcade. They didn’t seem to offer a car park, though, as far as I could see, and the police station was along a side street with a cobbled surface. The street-lights, which were now lit, were affixed to the walls.
I parked directly in front. Let them chase me off or tow it away — I was tired and niggly, looking for a fight. This wasn’t the homecoming I’d anticipated.
The building was an ungainly three-storey red brick monstrosity, sprawling and untidy, possibly built originally as an important town house by one of the local dignitaries. There was a blue lamp at the head of half a dozen wide steps, POLICE on a sign over the double doors, which were wide open and welcoming. Big enough to be run by a superintendent, I decided from my purely vicarious experience, my father having retired as a chief superintendent. They’d possibly brought her here, so the related incident or incidents had occurred in this town.
Straightening my shoulders, I marched up the steps.
A tiled hallway, my heels echoing into a lofty ceiling, a smell of disinfectant, and a long bench along one wall, polished by thousands of fidgeting bottoms. Facing this there was a wide counter, with nothing on it except a bell. Behind it, at a table against a side wall, a uniformed constable was leaning forward to stare at a VDU, and wearing headphones larger then his ears. I banged the button on top of the bell. Paused. Did it again. Its ting didn’t penetrate the headphones, but a burly station sergeant entered through a side doorway, wiping his hands on a dirty old towel.
‘Well, madam?’ he asked. ‘In a hurry, are we?’
No, I wasn’t, I realized. It was after six o’clock, but I was prepared to argue for hours. I was tired, but my brain was bouncing around with stimulation and an empty stomach.
‘Have you got a woman called Roma Felucci here?’ I asked quietly.
‘And who are you, ma’am?’ he asked.
I told him. Philipa Lowe. Arrived on the QE2 that very day. That was to clue him in on my interest, but he was unimpressed. He held up a hand while he wrote it all down.
‘What was that name again?’ he asked.
‘Roma Felucci.’ I spelled it for him.
He wrote it down, lifted his head. ‘Not to my knowledge,’ he told me, going back a few questions.
‘Star of Colossus.’
He wrote it down. ‘What’s that?’
‘A television soap.’
‘Is it?’ I hoped he could spell soap.
‘You’d perhaps know her here as Bella Fields. Or Bella Messenger. Or Isabella, I suppose. Or any permutation of those.’
He wrote it down, heavily ponderous, a great masculine lout who was having his bit of fun with the helpless and agitated female.
‘And your interest, may I ask?’
I told him again that we’d met on the QE2. ‘And as soon as she set foot on British soil,’ I said tersely, ‘she was apprehended, kidnapped, arrested, whatever you’d like to call it, by two men purporting to be police officers in the performance of their duties. Write it down,’ I told him sharply. ‘Or call your superior. It shouldn’t be difficult to locate one.’
He stared at me. The point of his pencil snapped off. I said, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’
He went to a corner and used a phone, whispering with his eyes on me, while the young constable turned and winked. He could hear well enough. Inside two minutes the sergeant was back. ‘Inspector Connaught will be down. If you’d care to take a seat...’
Then he lost interest in me, and I simply stood there, not intending to sit because it had been almost an instruction, not intending to walk back and forth and betray my tension. It was becoming clear that I’d intruded into something of importance, even possibly of unpleasantness.
Then suddenly, quietly, he stood before me, a man in his fifties, I guessed. Inspector Connaught. Arnold, I discovered later. This was one of your sleek ones, dapper, slim, smartly dressed in a grey suit and a red tie, his moustache beautifully trimmed, as though he counted the hairs each side of the parting, his hair light brown, abundant and professionally styled. A woman’s man, this one was, you could see it in his eyes. He expected a reaction, to detect something sparking between us. As it might have done, if his mouth hadn’t ruined the impact, his lips too moist and with the hint of a sarcastic quirk in the corners.
‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, no inflexion in it.
Patiently, I went through it again, staring into his sexy brown eyes and not offering anything. ‘Roma Felucci’, I said, ‘or Bella Fields or Bella Messenger. Is she here?’
‘We have an Isabella Fields, yes.’ He was eyeing me now with intense interest.
‘Is she under arrest?’
‘No. There’s no crime to level at her.’
‘Then what the hell...’
‘She is being questioned,’ he said soothingly.
‘Is it permissible to tell me what about?’
He smiled at my controlled patience. ‘Perhaps you’d better ask her about that yourself.’
‘You’re releasing her?’
‘We ought to be through in half an hour or so. We keep getting the same answers.’
I hesitated, then looked away from him so that I could concentrate. ‘Is there a decent hotel here?’ I asked.
‘You could try the Crown. Very sedate. You’d like it, though the beer’s lousy.’
‘Then I
’ll register there and be right back. All right?’
He smiled. One eyebrow twitched. ‘Is that your car outside? Yes? Then turn her around, and go back to the main street, turn right, and it’s on your left, just before you reach the castle.’
‘I am much obliged,’ I assured him politely, formally.
The castle was no more than the crumbling remains of a keep and a bit of collapsing wall. What could they expect, building a defensive stronghold in the bottom of a valley? Sheep were grazing on the grass in the courtyard. The Crown wasn’t impressive, but the inside was soothing and restful. They didn’t waste much money on light bulbs. I registered for a double room overlooking the street, and was told there was a small car park at the rear. Later, I discovered it was better described as a yard. There wasn’t a lift, and I’d never get all my stuff up those stairs, so I slipped the receptionist a quid and he did it for me. He was young and strong, and the way he reacted to my smile meant I’d wasted my money. He’d have taken them up a mountain for me.
I took the Rover back to the station, because that was where Bella’s luggage would be. She was pacing up and down in front of the desk, looking distraite and severe, a caged tigress searching for somebody to bite.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘They said somebody...’ She finished it with a gesture, impatient and graceless. I might have been her maid.
We took her stuff out to the car. You’d have thought she was moving home, not just sneaking a month off. ‘Here?’ she asked, surveying the hotel. ‘The Imperial’s better.’ Then she forgot it. ‘I need a bath, a shower. Something. They made me feel filthy...’
He was there, eagerly, my receptionist. One look at her… oh, he knew her. At once.
‘This way, Miss Felucci.’ And he led the way up the stairs. She looked round the room. The receptionist slid out, feeling the sudden chill. She stared at the twin beds.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t want a double room.’
‘I thought —’
‘Please don’t make decisions for me.’
Bury Him Darkly Page 2
