I never use budget accounts because the utility companies get your money before they’ve earned it. But tidy-minded people who like to conduct their affairs just-so, and who aren’t money-wise, often do. People like Elspeth. As she did for gas and electricity. So why not for the telephone?
I added it to my action list.
Ring BT – E.D.’s phone.
Then the doorbell rang. I went to let Nick in. ‘Hi,’ she said as she followed me up the stairs. ‘I’ve got all the stuff you wanted.’
She was beginning to speak to me unprompted. She deserved a reward and I gave her one in the form of a set of keys to my flat. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and fiddled about under her sweatshirt, fished out a chain with a key already on it, and added mine, looking coy. I groped briefly for an appropriate response, then wondered why I was being so slow. It was Grace or Grace, of course.
‘Did Grace give you a key to her house?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, she did. And she says I can stay while I’m working with you.’
She sounded pleased about it. I was surprised she wasn’t disappointed that a term had been set to her bliss. ‘And then you’ll go back to your foster parents?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe back to the streets. But Grace told me, it’s one of the secrets of life, always sell too soon.’
‘Sell what?’
‘Like in the stock market, and in relationships too, she said it’s important to get out before you’re thrown out.’
Experienced Grace, skilled in the techniques she must so often need in handling infatuates. Tell ’em early, tell ’em when they think you’re perfect, when they’ll swallow anything you say, and then it won’t be so difficult to shed them because your firmness will just be part of the magic that is Grace.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’
She handed over her notes, and then the telephone rang.
It was Elspeth, profoundly upset, calling from a neighbour’s phone.
Half an hour later I was stuck in the commuter traffic leaving London on the M4, with a pile of cassette tapes for the journey on the seat beside me and my running clothes, toothbrush and toothpaste in a grip on the floor. Nick was presumably also stuck in the traffic, in a taxi on her way to the BBC at Shepherd’s Bush to pick up the Notting Hill Carnival footage from Maggie. After that her work was finished for the day and she could head for Grace Macarthy’s.
I was happy enough to be on my way to Elspeth’s. For the next four hours I had nothing to do but drive, and think, two of my favourite occupations. I could also listen to the radio and catch up with the day’s news. I usually read several newspapers, to keep up with the current media inventions, and to store away the few facts buried under the candyfloss of gossip and fashion suggestions, but I hadn’t looked at a newspaper or watched a television news for days.
So I inched my way along the flyover past the West London factories and out to Heathrow, and watched the planes heaving their heavy bodies into the air and heading for all the places I’d never been and hoped one day to go, on expenses. I half listened to an unconvinced and unconvincing Cabinet Minister explaining that the latest Government cock-up was actually a triumph of statesmanship, and wondered what Elspeth was up to.
Apparently, her kennels had been broken into; slogans were painted on the walls, and one was signed by the Womun. So surprise me. I’d half made up my mind that she was the Womun, and if that was so, one of the obvious next steps was to stage an incident involving herself as victim.
On the other hand she had sounded genuinely upset. Someone had killed one of her dogs, she’d said. I thought it was only one dog, though it had several names, as pedigree dogs often do. I worked on a dog-show documentary a while back and my notes had read like the cast-list of a Russian play.
Was it likely she’d kill her own dog? The way she dressed and acted, she was like the stereotype of a middle-aged woman who prefers dogs to people. But her dogs were a business; she kept none of them as pets, as far as I could see. No dog-beds, no leads hanging up by the coats, and most of all no dog-smell. Her kitchen had smelt of stew and disinfectant.
The Womun – whether Elspeth or not – evidently found no difficulty in killing animals. Perhaps she even enjoyed it.
But middle-aged women didn’t usually kill animals, from what I could remember of the literature. Children in the early stages of a career as a psychopath did: usually male children. So did older male perverts who tortured large animals, like horses and cows.
The traffic thinned out past the Henley turn-off and the voice on the radio changed to an economist explaining why the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement crisis would be resolved by a decisive move by the Bank of England to lower interest rates. He was followed by another economist equally certain that the same crisis would be resolved by raising the interest rates. I began to feel drowsy. I was short on sleep, and patience. I wondered why economists were paid three times what I was, and were never sacked for being wrong. As far as I knew. Maybe if I’d had an Oxford education like the Vestal Virgins. I’d understand.
I opened the windows, groped for a tape and clicked it in.
The Eagles. Fair enough. I’d sing along and that’d keep me awake, and I’d concentrate on trying to get one simple thing right.
Who killed the hamster? Forget the Womun. Focus on the hamster.
Suspect Number One had to be Teddy. He’d been there the afternoon it died. He was a young male. He’d been entirely unmoved by its death. He resented his mother: ‘women want to get inside your head’. He must resent smug little Bella: he lived with her; I resented her, and I’d only met her twice. If I’d had to listen to non-stop twee burblings about Mopsy and Hamster Heaven day in and day out, I’d have reached for the upholstery needle.
I was happy with Teddy as first murderer. But he couldn’t be the Womun. It had definitely been a female voice on my answer-phone, and Teddy’s voice was unequivocally male, at times as near as Anglo-Saxon voices get to a genuine bass. Plus there was no reason to suppose that he knew anything about the Oxford activities of the Vestal Virgins – Melanie wasn’t likely to have told him.
The open windows were beginning to chill me and I couldn’t hear the tape for wind-noise, but I was still sleepy and I needed petrol. So I pulled in at the next service station, filled the car up, and entertained myself in the queue to pay by trying to count how many of the hundreds of objects for sale in the pay station anyone could conceivably want to buy. Oil, etc., OK. But how often, mid-journey, do you want a dried flower arrangement? Or a giant pink dinosaur? Or a cassette tape of The Best of Tom Jones? Was there a Best of Tom Jones?
Next to the pay-station was a telephone box. As I left I turned towards it, turned away, turned back and went in. I punched in my British Telecom card, then rang Barty’s number. A different answering service voice; still female, but much older. No, sorry, Mr O’Neill wasn’t available. Did I want to leave a message?
Yes, I did. From Alex Tanner. Could he please ring me to clear up a misunderstanding?
Ah. The voice had a message for Miss Tanner, if Miss Tanner rang.
‘I’m ringing.’
Rustle of papers. Clearing of throat. I read, for the third time, the prostitute’s card stuck up behind the instructions on use of the phone. Miss Birchstern promised strict discipline, locally. Then the voice, puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Tanner, I don’t understand this message. I’ve just begun my shift and the paperwork was passed on and—’
‘Why don’t you read it to me?’ I suggested, hunching up against the cold wind.
‘It really doesn’t seem to make sense . . .’
‘Perhaps it will to me,’ I said, blowing on my chilled fingers.
‘It just says . . . no, this can’t be right—’
‘Give me the message,’ I snapped, sounding remarkably like Miss Birchstern.
‘It says,’ the voice said huffily, ‘ “So find me. Smartass.” ’
Chapter Fifteen
That did it. Of
course I could find him, if I really tried. But I had other things to do than playing silly buggers with him.
Still, I’d have a cup of coffee and think about it. I needed a break from driving.
I reversed, bad-temperedly and illegally, from the fuel section to the restaurants and toilets section of the service area, parked and went through to the self-service café. It was almost full of people who looked, under the glaring light and through my irritable eyes, as if they were in the second day of a particularly debilitating attack of flu.
I took my lukewarm coffee to the furthest corner of the barn-like room and sat facing the window and the twilit motorway. Headlights streamed towards me and away and I tried to remember anything Barty had told me last Sunday about his planned movements for this week.
The documentary he was working on, about American aid to the IRA, was nearly finished. He’d said something about taking the shuttle to Belfast mid-week to see a contact about a last-minute update on the figures. He’d also mentioned lunch with the footling producer Alan Protheroe, a lunch he’d been putting off for weeks, and had been finally set for Thursday. Or Friday. I couldn’t remember which, but I could find out.
Or could I? Barty was hiding. He’d moved out of his house, for sure. He’d be altogether too easy to find there. If he’d told Dave Marshall at the editing suite not to give out his mobile phone number, he’d probably have told Alan Protheroe the same. But Protheroe was bullyable. He did whatever the most powerful person told him.
On the other hand, he wouldn’t find it easy to choose between Barty and me in terms of power. I was far more useful to him – I often worked for him and pulled his indecisive chestnuts out of the real-world fire – but Barty was a successful producer, not a mere researcher. And he was rich. And he was aristocratic. And he was a man.
No, I wouldn’t risk approaching Alan directly. But I could certainly find out from his assistant where he was lunching Thursday and Friday, and put Nick on to it.
That’s what I’d do, I decided, pushing away the coffee, which was undrinkable even by me, even after I’d bought it at motorway service station prices. Tomorrow I’d ring Alan’s office, before he got in, and tackle his assistant, an amiable nubile idiot called Jacqui, employed for window-dressing.
When I arrived at Elspeth’s house it was eight-thirty and dark as only the country can be. No reassuring background city glow: just pitch-black roads and brooding trees and a light drizzle to dampen whatever spirits the urban visitor might retain.
I parked in front of the house to a predictable chorus from the kennelled dogs, and before I reached the front door Elspeth opened it. She was wearing fluffy red slippers, dark grey flannel trousers, a white shirt and a thick matted wool sweater which might once have been blue but which had washed to grey. Her hair was sticking out from her head in frizzy tufts and her face was swollen and blotched with several hours’ worth of crying.
She hugged me and pulled me into the kitchen. ‘My dear, my dear, thank you for coming. I never thought . . . oh, I never thought anyone would harm a dog. An innocent dog. My poor Gunpowder Blue, King of Kinsale. Poor, poor Gunny. That’s what I call him – called him – oh dear.’ She broke down into sobs, tore handfuls of kitchen paper and scrubbed at her face like a child. ‘That – woman. I won’t call her a bitch. I like bitches. I’ve never met a vindictive, heartless bitch, have you? Only human females. My poor Gunny. My best stud dog.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. She was certainly genuinely emotional; she was convincing me. ‘Which woman do you mean?’
‘Melanie Slater, of course. Of course. The Womun in the Balaclava Helmet. I mean, it has to be. Only one of us three would know about it, would use that name now. Back in the sixties in Oxford the Womun was a byword, but now everyone’s forgotten, except us four, because people do forget, although you hope they won’t, and then Leona died so there were only three of us left, and then when you came and told me about it I knew it wasn’t me, of course, and so I thought it must be Grace up to some mischief because she does like mischief.’
I perched on a kitchen stool while she skittered round the kitchen in uncoordinated bursts of movement. ‘You thought it was Grace?’
‘Yes, I did. And if my phone had been on I’d’ve rung her to ask why and what she wanted me to do and if I could help. I’d’ve enjoyed helping; it’s always fun doing anything with Grace. And I meant to ring from another phone but I never got round to it. And of course I was wrong and it wasn’t Grace, it was Melanie—’
‘How do you know?’ I interrupted.
‘Well, Grace would never kill a dog, would she? You haven’t seen what that woman did. Come and see.’
She pulled me after her, outside towards the kennels, her fluffy slippers sliding and caking in the mud, still talking: ‘I told the police immediately and they came to investigate and they sent people to take photographs and they asked me not to touch anything until the photograph people came, and it was terrible because the other dogs could smell the blood of course and they howled and I couldn’t stop them.’
By this time we’d reached the kennel buildings and the dogs weren’t doing a bad job at howling her down once more. But as soon as she opened the door and spoke to them – ‘I’m here, my darlings, I’m here, my pets, hush now, it’s all right’ – the din subsided.
Inside, I looked round, overpowered by the combined smell of dog pee and disinfectant. We were in a substantial shed, about thirty, feet wide by forty feet long by ten feet high. On each side of a central concreted path was a row of dog-runs, fenced off with wire, leading to small covered kennels. Most of the dog-runs were occupied. It was a breed of dog I’d never seen before: large terriers, with long legs, square terrier heads and a short curly coat of a shade of black so dark it was almost blue.
Kerry Blues. So that was what they looked like.
They all ran to the front of the wire as Elspeth and passed – she was taking me down the middle path towards the far end – and whined for her attention. But she was too absorbed to respond. ‘Look. Come and look!’
As we approached the far wall of the building I could see writing on it in splashy red paint. Kill! Kill! DEATH is what Wimmin want! I will seek out and KILL the betrayers! And underneath it, the signature: The Womun in the Balaclava Helmet.
‘He was here!’ shouted Elspeth, stopping and pointing to an area of concrete splotched with dark stains. The dogs were howling again and I felt as if I was too close to the orchestra and chorus in a Wagner opera. ‘I moved him as soon as I could.’
‘What were his injuries?’ I shouted.
She began to sob again. ‘That – that – that bloody Melanie cut off his head.’
Chapter Sixteen
I didn’t particularly want to view the dog’s body, but Elspeth insisted. She took me into an outhouse, and there it was, on a low table, wrapped in a blanket. She opened the blanket for me to see.
Another Kerry Blue, in two parts. The neck had been severed neatly: by one blow, it seemed. The dark glazed eyes were still open. Elspeth put her hand forward and gently stroked its head in a tender movement which, more than her histrionics, convinced me that she had loved the dog.
Then something struck me. Its coat was matted with drying blood: she hadn’t washed it. She hadn’t closed its eyes. Why not? Perhaps the eyes wouldn’t close because rigor had set in before she was allowed to touch anything. Or perhaps she wanted a shocking display for me.
She stopped stroking the head, patted the body and then wrapped it once more in the blanket. ‘Come back to the house and we’ll have some stew,’ she said briskly. ‘You must be hungry after driving all the way from London. But I wanted you to see, I wanted you to understand. She’s really dangerous. You must take her seriously, you must, it’s terribly important. You do understand, don’t you?’
‘I agree it’s serious,’ I said, following her back to the house and into the kitchen. I did think it was serious. What I didn’t believe was that it had been done by Me
lanie Slater.
Nor did I necessarily believe that Elspeth thought it was Melanie, although she was trying to make me think she did. I felt manipulated. ‘What do you think I should do?’ I said.
‘I’ll have to think about that,’ she said. ‘The loo’s through there if you want to wash your hands – past the coats, into the hall, turn left, under the stairs.’
I went. It was a small toilet, quarry-tiled, damp-smelling, but sparklingly, clean. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with championship certificates won by her dogs. The toilet seat was up. I put it down automatically. Peter never remembered, either.
It wasn’t until I was buttoning my jeans that it struck me. Man-alert. Did she have a man staying there? Then I remembered the policemen.
She’d laid the table. Knives, forks, salt, pepper, Worcester sauce, butter, bread, two wine-glasses and linen serviettes. Plus a small vase of over-blown red roses, and two candles. Odd. She must be recovering. Or perhaps it was so fundamental to her to lay the table formally for a guest that she would struggle up from her death-bed to do it. Or perhaps she was in shock.
‘Good, just in time,’ she said. ‘The stew’s ready. I hope you don’t mind mutton? Some people don’t eat it these days, but my freezer’s full of it. Comes with keeping sheep.’
‘I didn’t know you were a farmer as well as a dog-breeder,’ I said.
‘Didn’t I mention it? Probably because it’s such, a small enterprise. I only have fifty acres, you see, and I work it myself. Sheep, some free-range chickens, that’s about it. Very stupid animals, sheep. Nervous. But good eating for me, though some people find mutton too rich.’ She ladled stew on to two plates, put them on the table, went to the door to turn the overhead light off, and came to sit down.
She’d combed her hair and the candlelight was kind to her face. Suddenly, I could see the girl in the punt photograph lurking under the weatherbeaten flesh, and I felt sorry for her. Not because she’d aged, but because her ageing had changed her so emphatically for the worse. I had no looks to speak of anyway but what I had would be with me until I was really old; I’d always look roughly the same, because I have regular features and good tough skin, and most of all because the lines of my face are straight, not curved. But her young prettiness had all been curves, and large eyes, and now the eyes were buried and the curves had sagged, and when she looked at herself she must see a different person.
The Glass Ceiling Page 10
