‘All the same . . .’ said Claudia.
‘ “My Alistair”, you reckon?’
‘That’d be evil, wouldn’t it?’
‘That’d be extraordinary,’ I said.
‘I bet Father Kelly would have called it evil. Plus, I went into Alistair’s study by mistake on purpose. He was there.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘Working out. With weights. He has incredible muscles, a great body, if you like that kind of thing.’
I turned in to the hotel car park. ‘Well done, Claudia. We’ll talk about it in a minute, but we’ve got to pick up the message. Smile at the creep, but not too warmly, because I want him to concentrate.’
The Trainee was pleased with his skill in tracking us down at Rissington Abbey, and he wanted Claudia to know how he had done it. ‘I had no idea where you were, of course, but then I remembered I’d taken a message with a local number, and I tried it, on the off-chance, and—’
I took my key and the message form.
5.6.92 am
Ring Mr Plumber MOST ERGENT
I dragged Claudia away from a still-talking Trainee.
‘You were right about being nice to him,’ she said. ‘I bet he wouldn’t have bothered trying to find us if I hadn’t . . .’
Back in my room, I dialled Plummer, expecting to talk to his secretary. He must have given me his private number, because he answered. I’d never had a call answered by a solicitor before. I’d never even been put straight through to talk to one. They’re always with a client.
So I knew before he spoke that it was indeed ‘most ergent’. His creamy smooth voice could only be almost ruffled, but it was that. ‘Miss Tanner? My client has expressed his urgent wish that you meet him, in France, tomorrow.’
‘You’d better tell me who he is.’
‘Baron Charles de Sauvigny Desmoulins.’
So it was the French grandfather At least I’d been right about something. ‘Saturday?’ I said. ‘What’s so urgent? What’s wrong with Monday?’
‘I think it better if he explains that himself,’ said Plummer with a distancing distaste. ‘He is, of course, prepared to pay the appropriate weekend rate. And if you let him know the time your plane arrives at Toulouse, he’ll send a car for you.’
I wouldn’t do that. I’d hire a car of my own. Never depend on other people’s transport; you can’t get out.
I didn’t actually have any choice. My time was bought and paid for. I got the address and telephone number from Plummer.
Next, I sent Claudia next door for packets of sugar that I didn’t need, and rang to cancel Barty. He sounded disappointed. I expect, so did I. ‘Where were we going?’ I asked.
‘Venice,’ he said.
‘Damn.’ I’ve worked in Venice, and Florence too, and I loved them both. Polly’s black Lycra dress would have been fine.
‘Next weekend, maybe?’ he said.
‘I hope so. Let’s talk on Monday.’
‘I want to see you tonight. Can I come round for a drink?’
‘I’ve got things to sort. I don’t know when I’ll be finished, and I may be leaving early on Saturday.’
‘Nine o’clock. I’ll be at home. Ring me if you’re not through.’
There was no reason I could give for refusing, especially not the real one, that while he was on my mind I couldn’t concentrate. I could always put him off . . .
Claudia was delighted. We were going to France. France she knew about. She didn’t doubt for a moment that we were both going, and thinking about it, of course it made sense. She’d pay her own expenses and she could speak the language fluently. I expected the Baron to speak English, but there might be other solely French-speaking people hanging about that I’d want to communicate with. I’d almost lost sight of the central Olivier question in dealing with the peculiar shenanigans at Rissington Abbey.
Actually, the original problem remained unresolved. Why did Olivier’s grandfather want to know his state of mind? If I could deal with that, and Kelly’s turned out to be a straightforward depressive suicide, then I needn’t even think about Rissington Abbey, perhaps. Or perhaps it would suddenly click into focus.
Claudia went ahead of me back to London by way of the Banbury Courier. I wanted a copy of the article Kelly’d written on last year’s sports day. I warned her to pretend to be surprised if Cycling Shorts was full of the news of Kelly’s tragic suicide. ‘Of course,’ she said.
I also gave her the Baron’s address and telephone number, and the job of finding a morning plane, booking the flight, reserving a hire car, and ringing the Baron’s house to tell them what time we’d be likely to arrive, making allowances for delays in the plane, etc. ‘Can you handle that?’ I said finally, when I’d explained.
‘No problem. Give me your driver’s licence number.’
‘You’ll need my credit card number as well.’
‘No. I’ll do it on mine.’
‘OK, but make sure you’re not out of pocket. Keep a record of your telephone calls, too. You can stay at my flat tonight, we’ll need to get our act together. Get there about seven.’
When she’d left and I had the room back, I enjoyed the silence. I took my boots off and padded around packing and thinking about Kelly, especially our first meeting, and my first sight of him at the bar, lonely, with his cigarettes. Diet Coke, and crossword.
When I was packed and ready to go, I rang the station to check on the next fast train to London, the hire car place to tell them I was returning the Nissan, and then Polly to find out when she was leaving for the country.
She sounded plaintive.‘I’m not sure,Alex . . .About five, perhaps . . .’
‘Five’s hopeless for the traffic. Earlier or later. Make it later and we’ll have time for a chat before you go. I’ll be back about half past four.’
‘OK. When shall I leave?’
‘Eight. Ring your parents and tell them not to wait for dinner.’
‘Eight’s too late.’
‘Seven?’
‘The traffic won’t be much better then.’
‘I’d like to see you before you go.’
‘OK, if you must.’
It was most unlike Polly to be so limp, and so sarky. The sooner I could see her, the better, I thought as I dialled Rissington Abbey and asked to speak to Mrs Ellis.
‘Oh,’ she said, sounding piqued. ‘So you won’t be coming back to us this afternoon?’
‘No. Something urgent’s come up in London . . . I was hoping to see you on Monday, if that’s all right . . .’
‘I’m not at all sure it will be,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you can telephone on Monday and see.’
A power freak, Mrs Ellis. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer,’ I said obligingly, and put the phone down swearing under my breath.
Then I rang Barty again. ‘Tell me the Baron’s cancelled,’ he said. ‘Make my day.’
‘No, sorry. You do crossword puzzles, don’t you? OK. Dark armour.’
‘Nine letters?’
‘No idea.’
‘A quick crossword, I presume?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s hardly a clue at all.’
‘What is it hardly a clue to?’
‘Blackmail.’
Blackmail. Of whom? By whom? Kelly’d written the word on a page with his notes of last year’s Sports Day at Rissington, just before buttocks on the diving-board spotlight. Say it was Olivier’s buttocks: we knew he was diving. He’d been Olivier’s priest. Maybe he knew Olivier was being blackmailed. Or blackmailing. More likely blackmailing, because young people weren’t good victims for blackmail. They didn’t have enough money, and they didn’t have enough to lose.
That might be a reason for killing him. But there was no reason to suppose he was killed. And even if he had been, presumably his secrets had died with him. If he’d kept any evidence it had long gone: cleared away by whoever had gone through his room before Tim got there the morning after Olivier’s death.
Would he have confided in anyone? Surely not. Knowledge was power. He’d keep anything he knew close to his chest.
And then I remembered something. Matilda Beckford’s kitchen: Matilda Beckford’s eyes: Tim’s barren study.
Her number was in the phone book.
‘Mrs Beckford?’
‘Yes?’
Her telephone manner was rusty. She held the receiver too far from her mouth and her voice trickled faintly across the wire.
‘This is Alex Tanner here. Remember, I saw you last Tuesday, about the television programme on Rissington Abbey?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I’ve been talking to Tim. Isn’t he nice?’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s had to go away for the weekend unexpectedly. To the Brecon Beacons.’
‘Oh, dear,’ she said with more animation, ‘poor Tim, he does hate the outdoors.’
‘And he was worried about something. He asked me to check with you.’
‘Yes?’
‘The things he left with you for safekeeping.’
Silence. Had I bluffed her?
‘Yes?’
I had bluffed her. Good. ‘Everything’s OK with them? They’re still with you?’ I asked at random, because I’d already found out what I wanted to know.
‘Oh, dear, oh, my dear – is something wrong?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I gave them to the nice Chinese boy. Did I do wrong?’
‘No, of course not,’ I soothed automatically. She sounded distraught.
‘He brought the note, you see, the note from Tim, and so I gave them to him.’
‘When was this?’
‘About an hour ago. I never thought—’
‘Tim probably changed his mind since he spoke to me and asked his friend to fetch them. That’ll be it.’
She blethered some more, I soothed some more.
Then I rang off. I’d got something. But what?
I’d think about it later. Time I went to London.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Polly looked terrible. Her flat was hot, musty, and Poison-filled: the windows were shut against the world, and she wouldn’t let me open them. Her sofa was a tangle of duvet and pillows. She sat in the centre of it, in a tracksuit that was much too big for her, which she hadn’t changed as far as I knew for the past two days. Her hair was grubby, and for the first time since we’d met, I had the feeling that I didn’t want to breathe in too deeply in her vicinity.
It was Friday, late afternoon. She hadn’t been out since Barty had brought her back on Wednesday morning. I didn’t think she’d washed. She’d drunk a bottle of gin in two days and her eyes looked as if they were colour co-ordinated for Christmas.
‘We’re going out,’ I said.
‘Let’s have a drink first.’
‘No. If you want a drink, we’re going out to have one. And not a strong one, either, because you’re driving. A healthful orange juice with a tiny trace of gin in it.’
‘I haven’t had a drink all day. We finished the gin last night.’
That was a better sign than it sounded. She was evidently confining herself to gin, because the house was full of other spirits left over from the party.
‘You finished the gin. I was drinking coffee.’
‘You always do,’ she said cantankerously. ‘Caffeine’s very bad for you.’
‘Got washed and changed and we’ll go out.’
‘I’m not going out. I can’t put any make-up on.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t bear to look at my face.’
‘If you want a drink, we’re going out. You needn’t wear makeup. Just get clean.’
She complained all the way upstairs and into my bath. She complained when I washed her hair and when I took a flannel and soaped her, nearly all over. ‘Flannels are unhygienic,’ she said. She reminded me of Claudia. Why was I fated to deal with people who made massive fusses over tiny things? People who were probably much less healthy than me? I hadn’t had a day’s illness in my life, literally. The only time I was in hospital, as I told you earlier, was when someone else broke my leg. People’s obsessions are strange. I don’t argue with them. I just kept soaping her so she had to move, to wash the soap off, because I was using a supermarket own-brand and she only used special high-fat extra olive-oiled ultra-expensive soap which would keep her beautiful longer. That was a problem I didn’t have.
Eventually she stood up and I dried her and pointed at the clean clothes I’d laid out on my bed.
‘What if someone sees me?’ she asked querulously. ‘Those are my house-cleaning jeans. And that T-shirt’s dreadful. It looks like one of yours.’
Nothing wrong with the T-shirt. It was old and thin, but clean, bright white, and easy to wear. Soft, baggy, cool enough for the sweltering weather, that’s why I’d chosen it. ‘If you don’t want to wear those, choose your own,’ I said briskly.
‘I can’t be bothered . . . But what if someone sees me?’
‘If you’re not done up they won’t recognize you,’ I said.
‘I don’t care anyhow . . . Just so long as we don’t go to Faxes.’
That suited me fine. The cafés, bistros, and wine bars around our neck of the woods are all more or less smart, but Faxes was far and away the smartest. It was always full of the well-groomed twentysomethings that swarmed round Ladbroke Grove, looking as if they knew they were already something special, just watch this space for fame. Plus, usually, at least three or four of the genuinely famous or near-famous.
When we got there, Faxes had tables out on the pavement, in honour of the heatwave: so did Forty-Three, the smaller, less crowded place just opposite, also on Westbourne Park Road. I wanted to sit out but Polly insisted she didn’t want the sun on her face, not without blocker. So we went into Forty-Three and I followed her to a far table near the window but screened from the rest of the room by two huge cheese plants.
The waiters at Forty-Three are always, for some reason (A gay owner? An Australian?) tall, muscular, and blond, looking as if they’ve just stepped off the Bondi Beach Shuttle. Our waiter introduced himself as David. He was well up to the usual standard and I tried not to stare at his jean-hugged crotch as I ordered Polly a double freshly squeezed orange juice and two ham and cheese croissants, her favourite, and myself some coffee.
She looked round uneasily at first, then relaxed a bit when she saw no one she knew. They couldn’t have seen us through the cheese plants, as it was. ‘Now you can tell me what’s really the matter,’ I said.
‘Clive’s left me,’ she said blankly.
‘I know that. But you didn’t want the relationship to go anywhere anyway. I’m worried about you, Polly. Trust me. You know I’ll never tell another living soul.’
She started to cry without sobbing. Tears rolled down her cheeks and plopped onto the T-shirt. ‘I can’t say . . . It’ll sound so stupid . . .’
‘No it won’t,’ I lied.
‘It’s my life. My meaningless life. I’ll be thirty next birthday, and what have I done? I don’t have a proper man, I don’t have any children. Both my sisters have children, people to call them Mummy, people who they matter to . . . I haven’t done anything. OK, I’ve been famous, but that makes it worse. I’ve been something, it’s past, it’ll be all downhill from here, my looks’ll go, and who’ll I be?’
‘You’ve got more money than you ever need. You’ll be a chartered accountant, so you’ll have a career. And you’re one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met.’
‘I’m not nice at all. And even if I was, that’s not enough . . .
And the money’s nothing. You keep on about it, Alex, it matters to you. It doesn’t matter to me.’
‘It’d sure as hell matter if you didn’t have any.’
&nb
sp; ‘I need something to live for. I’ve got to have something to live for, something to look forward to when I get up in the morning, something to buy clothes for and put make-up on for – oh, shit, it’s Clive.’
‘Forget Clive,’ I said impatiently.
‘No, I mean it’s Clive, over there at Faxes – it’s Clive, with Cassie.’ My eyes followed her pointing finger. There, at one of the pavement tables opposite, was Clive.And, smugly under her writhing red hair, Cassie. Loyalty to Polly didn’t prevent me from noticing that Cassie looked deliciously cool in a yellow linen shirt and a tiny pale green linen skirt.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
‘I’m not walking out there past that woman. Not looking like this. I don’t want him to see me looking like this. He’ll guess I’m upset. I don’t want him to know I’m upset, or her, I don’t want them to know—’
Her voice was sliding upwards towards hysteria. ‘If you start screaming, they will know,’ I said flatly. ‘Get a grip, Polly. If we just walk straight out, past them, he won’t even notice. You don’t look like yourself. You just look ordinary, like me. He won’t give you a second look.’ I didn’t point out also that he was so busy looking into Cassie’s eyes and showing off that the chances were he’d notice nothing but Cassie anyway, even if Madonna strutted past in a bustier.
David brought Polly’s hot croissants and, as he put them down, he winked at me. That was the first time, ever, that when I was out with Polly a man noticed me, not her. She’d noticed, too. She looked at the croissants and pushed them away. ‘Hey’ – I caught David’s attention as he turned away – ‘is there a back way out of here? There’s someone outside we don’t want to meet.’
He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. ‘Sorry. Just the one entrance.’
Polly was lamenting. ‘I didn’t even bring my bag – I’ve got no make-up – Alex, you told me not to bring my bag – You made me wear these awful awful jeans and this rag of a T-shirt—’
‘I told you not to bring your bag because you didn’t need money. I didn’t know you’d have to do a quick change into Polly Coyne, Top Model.’
‘It’s all your fault,’ said Polly helplessly, and I lost patience.
‘Come on,’ I said, grabbed her by the upper arm and started dragging her through to the back of the wine bar.
In At The Deep End Page 15
