‘Alex?’ said Grace rather sharply into the pause. It hadn’t hurt her to wait.
‘I was wondering why famous people glow,’ I said.
She laughed. Heartily, as if what I’d said was funny. Which it wasn’t.
Nick laughed too, loyal to Grace.
I sat in silence, waiting.
Eventually Grace spoke. ‘Why don’t you like me, Alex?’
I’d waited her out. A small victory. Which, judging by the amusement in her eyes, she didn’t see as a victory at all.
‘Does it matter?’ I said. ‘Nick, tell Grace the story, please.’
Chapter Eight
‘Wasn’t she amazing?’ said Nick in the car on our way home. Not my car: I can’t afford one. My friend Polly’s new black Golf GTi, which she’s letting me use while she’s in Hong Kong.
‘I suppose that’s where she got her name.’
‘What name?’
‘Her nickname: Amazin’ Grace.’
‘Like the song? I didn’t know she was called that . . . It makes all kinds of sense, though. Yeah, it fits.’ She stared dreamily ahead. ‘When you went to the toilet, she said I could stay at her place, if I wanted.’
‘And do you want?’
‘I don’t know . . . Yeah, I do, but I might get on her nerves, and I couldn’t stand that, to watch her eyes cloud over. I bet they do; what do you think, Alex?’
‘About her eyes? Nothing at all.’ About Nick, I was thinking plenty. Mary’d asked me to look after her, and I wasn’t sure throwing her to Grace Macarthy would come under that heading. ‘Nick, are you gay?’
‘Sure,’ said Nick. ‘Are you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not even bi. What d’you think about Grace? Is she?’
‘Hope so,’ said Nick. ‘I’m not sure. She might just be a great human being.’
Or she might want to get her hooks in a vulnerable kid as fuel for the roaring furnace of her ego. On the other hand, she might want to keep an eye on my investigation.
If so, she’d hidden her interest well. She’d listened to Nick’s account of my client’s odd behaviour, read the letter, and seemed helpful and open. She had no idea who it might be. She had no idea what the letter might mean. She was sure Leona’s death had been an accident. She was very grateful for my warning.
She’d been so blandly, obstructively noncommittal that I’d gone to the toilet to leave them alone together to see if she’d pump Nick. ‘When I was in the toilet, what did you talk about?’
‘Me. She asked about me. She said she could see I was an unusual person. I told her all about myself. She was interested. People always ask me, but they’re only pretending to listen, waiting for me to stop talking so they can tell me what they’d decided to tell me anyway.’
‘She didn’t talk about the case?’
‘What case?’
‘The investigation. The letter, the parcel, the Womun.’
‘Oh, that. No. Nothing.’ Nick did some more dreamy staring, then said, ‘Alex, she’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me. Ever.’
I was supposed to be giving her work experience, not acting as a dating agency. Some time soon I’d have to start giving her pointers, about loyalty to your boss and about concentration on the task at hand. Not yet, though. I’d let her take her dream and run with it, for a while.
Back at the flat there were no answerphone messages. I sent Nick to the kitchen to make scrambled eggs for lunch so I didn’t have to watch her yearning about, and got on the phone.
I tried Elspeth Driscoll’s number first. A high-pitched whine. Checked with the operator: line out of order. I reported the fault, then dialled West End Central police station looking for Eddy Barstow, Peter’s father. After five minutes of re-routing I got him.
He sounded jovial and pleased with himself, ‘So what can I do you for, Alex? Tell your Uncle Eddy.’
I explained what I wanted, while he made notes: details of Melanie Slater’s break-in, if she’d reported it, and the lowdown on Leona Power’s accident, if there was any. He whistled. ‘When do you want it?’
‘ASAP. Tomorrow morning would do.’
‘Breakfast time? D’you want me to call you or nudge you?’
‘Call me, Eddy. This info’s not worth the ultimate sacrifice.’
‘Bollocks, gal. You’d enjoy it, trust me. I’d show you a good time, and young Peter tells me you’ve lost your nerve in the bedroom area, so I’d be doing you a favour.’
‘When did he tell you that?’
‘He gave me a bell this morning.’
I was narked. I’ve never believed that women were bigger gossips than men, but this beat the jungle-drum speed record. ‘He should keep his mouth shut,’ I said.
‘Don’t be like that. We’re family, with your best interests at heart. Young Peter’s very fond of you.’
‘He called me a bossy ball-busting cow.’
‘That’s what I just said, he’s fond of you.’
His sweaty good nature was getting on my teeth, but I wanted the info, so I kidded along for another minute before I rang off, making a mental note to give Peter a hard time later.
‘Food’s ready when you want it,’ said Nick.
After lunch I needed a break from Nick. I changed into my running gear again – no green T-shirt for me this time, my eyes were back to disappointed hazel – left Nick to decide where she was spending the night and fix up the details with Grace Macarthy if she needed to, and to ring the vet’s for any results on the hamster, and headed up Ladbroke Grove towards Notting Hill and Barty.
He’d hired the answering service to annoy me, I knew it. Nobody in the media used services any more. The mobile or the answer-phone covered it if you didn’t have an assistant, which at the moment he actually did. So he was deliberately keeping away from me. Maybe he was angry. I’d seen him angry with other people, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
If he was at home, I’d speak to him. If he wasn’t, I’d grill his assistant, if she was there.
There was no sign of life in the house, nor in his office in the basement. I rang both bells until the futility was too obvious for further pretence. Then I ran round Holland Park for twenty minutes, then I ran home, sprinted up the stairs, and collapsed on the sofa. I was knackered. And furious.
Nick was radiant with excitement. ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘You’ve signed on for an amazing night with Amazin’ Grace.’
‘I’m staying there all right, but Alex – listen, Alex – about the hamster.’
‘What?’ I said grumpily.
‘It was murdered.’
The anger went first. I was still knackered, but now I was interested. ‘How?’ I said.
‘Stabbed to the heart. With something very narrow and sharp, like an upholstery needle.’
‘Why didn’t I see the blood?’
‘The vet says it wouldn’t have bled much, externally, because the puncture was so narrow. And maybe it was cleaned up afterwards. How closely did you look?’
‘Not very . . . I don’t like dead things.’
‘You’d never make a doctor, then.’
‘And you’d never survive a week as an investigator, if you sleep with all the suspects,’ I said snappily.
Nick was too excited to notice. ‘Do you still think it’s Melanie Slater’s hamster? And if so, why was it killed?’
‘No idea,’ I said. I hadn’t. But I was now – and for the first time – really worried.
Chapter Nine
Elspeth Driscoll’s phone was still out of order when I tried it for the fourth time, at seven o’clock that evening. I stopped my mind churning out visions of her lying, stabbed to the heart by an upholstery needle, near a wrecked telephone in Forge House, deepest Herefordshire. My instinct was to drive straight down to her place, but I couldn’t: I couldn’t possibly manage the drive in under six hours, there and back, and at seven-thirty I had to be in shallowest Kensington, ready to follow Arabella Trigg to her love-tryst. If it was a love-
tryst.
Once I’d done the business for Adrian Trigg then maybe I’d go to warn Elspeth Driscoll. Or discover her body.
At seven-twenty I was sitting alone (Nick had gone to yearn at Grace Macarthy) in a parked taxi about fifty yards up from Adrian Trigg’s house and, coincidentally, only about two hundred yards from Melanie Slater’s. Investigator to the Kensington set, that was me.
Two weeks ago I’d shared a takeaway pizza and video evening with my old mate Michelle and her two kids in her ninth-floor flat on the Fulham council estate where I’d grown up. Evenings with Michelle had to feature takeaways: she’s been agoraphobic ever since the estate gang raped her fifteen years back. The downside of the agoraphobia is that her choice of boyfriends is limited; the upside is that it’s no skin off her nose that the lifts never work. She’d been on at me for my lack of social conscience, though she didn’t put it that way. ‘Why do you never work for our lot?’ she’d said. ‘Plenty of wrongs to right on the estate. Starting with the sodding loan-sharks.’
I’d given her some blag. But the truth was, if you lived on the estate, you couldn’t afford me. Not on Social Security. And I had to live, didn’t I?
And now the expensive door to the Triggs’ expensive house was opening, and out came Arabella, just as pretty as her photograph. She got into a middle-range Mercedes and I said to my taxi-driver, ‘That’s her. And that’s the car I want you to follow.’
I’d been lucky with my driver. He was a late middle-aged, world-weary Cockney who had no views on the political situation in Britain. None that he wanted to communicate, anyhow. So for once in a taxi I had a bit of peace.
He grunted, started the taxi and followed the Mercedes into Kensington High Street, all the way along to Hyde Park Corner, and north by the Park. We nearly lost her at Marble Arch but picked her up again travelling east in the one-way system just north of Oxford Street and followed her all the way to Harley Street, where she parked in one of the whopping great meter spaces provided by a thoughtful council for the top doctors’ big cars.
My taxi pulled in to a parking space behind her. ‘What d’you want me to do?’ said my driver.
‘Hang on for me a moment.’ I hopped out of the taxi and followed Arabella along the road. She stopped at a lighted doorway, rang a bell and was almost immediately let in, before I reached her. I’d no idea which of the bells she’d rung but I waited until the door closed firmly behind her then nipped up the steps and wrote down the names on the brass plates by the door. Some were doctors and surgeons; some were just names, with letters after them that I didn’t recognize. But I copied them all down and went back to the taxi.
‘Ladbroke Crescent, please,’ I said. I wasn’t going to hang around until she came out: I’d enough information to be going on with. Either she was consulting one of these medical gentlemen or she was bonking him; I’d establish that tomorrow.
Eight-thirty, back at the flat, there was a note from Peter. Out for the night. On to a good, blonde thing. See you at breakfast. Don’t worry, you’re an ace legover.
Annoyed rather than encouraged by this cack-handed loyalty, I checked the answering machine – no messages – and tried Elspeth Driscoll again. The receiver whined at me. Still out of order
I opened my french windows to my pseudo-balcony. The temperature had dropped to the mid-forties and there was a breeze blowing. I could do with a breeze. My head felt cluttered.
What to do now? If you padded the hours a tadge, which I usually did, I’d already worked nearly the day the Womun had paid me for. It didn’t make sense to spend another six hours’ worth – at least – on a wild-goose chase to the country, paying for my own petrol. Elspeth Driscoll might be away. She’d almost certainly, if she was there, be soundly asleep in her respectable bed. She might refuse to answer the door, after midnight. Her husband, if she had one, might be a country gentleman type with a shotgun who’d pepper me with pellets and prejudices.
But if I didn’t go, and something happened to her, I’d regret it. I like to keep low deposits on my guilt-account.
Plus if I didn’t go I’d certainly go round to Barty’s again, which would be a terrible move. And I like driving alone, at night, in a free car, with Mahler playing on a high-quality stereo.
I found the village of Leadington easily enough, at a quarter past midnight. The last twenty minutes of the drive were through orchards and fields on the west side of the Malvern Hills, which gloomed over the dark landscape like the smooth humps of a mythical monster. The village itself was hicksville-on-ooze, a village shop and post office, a pub, and several cottages clustered round the road and a smallish river. There were very few lights, and none of them were downstairs.
I parked by the pub and got out of the car.
It was almost cold, here, and almost silent, except for the sound of the river, and the air was fresh. Fresher than it ever was in London.
I think the country’s overrated, but be fair, it’s a rest-cure for your lungs. I put on my leather biker’s jacket and walked up the main street resting my lungs and looking at the names on the cottages. None of them was Forge House, but I hadn’t expected them to be. There were some flower-names (Rose, Honeysuckle and Violet); Hill Bank Cottage (no hill or bank in sight); Riverside Cottage (furthest from the river) and – promisingly – Nelson Mandela Cottage, with a light on upstairs.
I’d give that a whirl. They’d probably be least threatened by a late caller in a biker’s jacket and DMs. I knocked on the front door (no bell), admired the push-chair and unidentifiable car parts rusting in the tiny weed-filled front garden, and waited.
Voices. Thump, thump down the stairs, and the door was opened by a man in his forties in a Greenpeace T-shirt and the kind of leather bikini briefs sold by specialist mail-order firms. More a thong, really.
I tried to talk to his face, not his thong, but it was a struggle. When he understood what I was after; he said, ‘Oh sure. You want Elspeth. Straight along here for a quarter of a mile, when the road forks take the left fork, it’s just there on the right. You’ll hear the barking.’ Then he laughed, and added, ‘Not just of the dogs.’
His voice was posh, like Barty’s. His thong moved as he spoke. I thanked the thong and he closed the door.
I took the left fork, slowed down approaching some gates, and opened the electric windows. Sure enough, dogs. Plenty of them. I turned between the gates into a short, potholed, overgrown drive and stopped in front of a darkened house surrounded by trees.
The house looked dilapidated in the headlights: decaying windows, peeling paint on the front door, bricks overdue for pointing. It needed upkeep. But it was beautiful: Elizabethan, probably, without any obvious additions. Say six or eight bedrooms. If it had any land, apart from the front garden which was taken up by a large wooden structure, presumably kennels, it would be very valuable.
As I got out of the car a light went on upstairs, on the right. Then the hall light went on, and finally the door opened. A woman stood there, back-lit so I couldn’t make out her features, with shortish fuzzy hair, skinny legs under a flannel nightshirt and a barrel body.
‘Elspeth Driscoll?’ I said.
‘Ya,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Who wants her?’
‘I’m Alex Tanner, a private investigator. Sorry to disturb you at this time of night, but I was worried about you and your phone’s out of order. I’ve reason to believe you’re in danger. I’ve received threats.’ I was almost shouting, to be heard over the barks.
‘Threats? Who from?’
‘I don’t really know . . . A client who calls herself the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet.’
‘Belt up, darlings!’ she bellowed. The barking, briefly, stopped. When it did, all I could hear was Elspeth. She was giggling, irrepressibly, like an adolescent. ‘You’d better come in and tell me about it,’ she said between gasps. ‘The Womun in the Balaclava Helmet, eh? I thought we’d buried her long since.’
Wednesday, 29 September
Chapter Ten
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br /> ‘It was a joke, really,’ she said. ‘Twenty years ago. More. When we were all at Oxford. We had a feminist group, called—’
‘The Vestal Virgins,’ I said.
She was pleased. ‘So you’ve heard of us! Brilliant! How much sugar in your cocoa?’
‘Lots,’ I said. We were in her kitchen. Large, stone-flagged, authentic country, draughty and cold. No fitted cupboards; an Aga, some tall cupboards with shelf tops displaying crockery, a whacking great wooden kitchen table scrubbed white, a sink from the forties and a fridge from the fifties.
‘Bring your chair closer to the Aga,’ she instructed, seeing me shiver. She’d put on a Barbour over her blocky middle-aged body and stuffed her bare feet into fleece-lined boots. She had a round, weatherbeaten, broken-veined face, brown eyes bright between puffy lids and bags, and greying dark hair which had been dyed and permed too long ago. I tried, but I couldn’t place her at all as the girl in the photograph. She looked much older than Macarthy or Slater, but she sounded much younger. Her voice was light, bubbly and clear. It sounded middle-class, slightly dated, and innocent.
‘We were an activist group,’ she went on, handing me a mug and pulling a chair up beside me. ‘We did things. But so we didn’t get into trouble all the time we wore Balaclava helmets. So when I painted “Male Chauvinist Pig” on the door of the Master’s Lodgings, at Trinity, I wore a Balaclava helmet. In case I was seen. And that was how we signed ourselves.’
‘So the Womun in the Balaclava Helmet could be any of you?’
She nodded cheerfully and giggled. ‘It was any of us. Whoever was taking action, you see?’
‘You or Grace or Leona or Melanie?’
‘Yes, of course. Any of us. Like . . . the Saint with his drawing in the Leslie Charteris books. It was our signature. But that was yonks ago, as I said. What’s the Womun done now?’
The Glass Ceiling Page 6
