by Ann Granger
‘All right, but I’m not discussing that with you.’
He looked away from me and at the skeleton in its glass box as if in some way he was happier addressing that. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘what kind of work Lisa did in London.’
‘It wasn’t so bad.’ I found myself defending her. ‘There’s worse. It wasn’t illegal.’
‘I saw the place, the Silver Circle.’
That took me aback. ‘When?’ I asked.
‘Soon after she started work there. I was going to London on business. I asked Jennifer for Lisa’s address so that I could look her up. I found her living in a horrible grubby room in a run-down council block in Rotherhithe.’
‘And was Lisa pleased to see you?’ I was ready to bet she hadn’t been.
‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘Not at first, anyway. I think she was embarrassed and afraid I’d tell her parents how she was living. But when she realised I wouldn’t do that, she became quite pleased to see a friendly face. She was feeling really low. She hadn’t been able to get proper work as a dancer. She wasn’t eating enough. She told me that she’d just started work at a club, the Silver Circle, but it was temporary. She needed the money to pay her rent. She didn’t have the whole flat to herself, just a room in it, but the rent was still pretty steep.’
‘I bet the council didn’t know the tenant was subletting, ’ I said.
‘I tried to persuade her to come back to Oxford with me,’ Ned said. ‘But she still believed she could get real work. So I had to leave her there. But I made a point of finding out where the club was. I didn’t go inside it. There was a bouncer at the door.’
‘A square-built bloke with thinning hair?’ I asked him, wondering if he’d encountered Harry.
‘No, a tall, blond, mean-looking guy.’
Ivo, I thought. ‘Did you visit Lisa again in London?’
He shook his head. ‘I kept getting glowing reports from Jennifer about how well Lisa was doing, working in the chorus of all the big musical shows. So I thought things were all right, and she had found work and wasn’t at the club any longer. Then, the other day, she came back unexpectedly to Oxford. She was in a bit of a state. She came round to my flat and told me that it was all a lie, everything she’d told her parents. She’d been working at the club all the time for an audience of boozy businessmen and perverts, but she’d had enough and left. Only the chap who runs the place, Allerton, took a dim view of that and he’d be sure to try and get her to come back if he found out where she was. She was terrified he would find out and when we looked out of my window yesterday in the evening and saw you talking on a mobile across the road, well, Lisa was suspicious at once. I told her not to worry, you were just someone lost and phoning for directions. But then later, after Jennifer and Paul left their house, we saw you come back and ring their doorbell so we knew then, you must be from Allerton.’
‘Ned,’ I told him, ‘I know you mean well, but there’s nothing you can do. I’m glad Lisa’s got a friend to tell her troubles to. But that’s as far as it goes. I don’t like this situation either, but I’ve got a job to do. Think of it this way: it’s better Lisa deals with me than with one of Allerton’s musclemen.’
‘I don’t want her going back there!’ he said desperately. For a moment he looked as if he was going to burst into tears.
‘I’m not forcing her to go back. I just want her to make contact with Allerton. Leave it to me, right?’
‘I don’t know if I can trust you,’ he said.
I told him brutally that if he trusted me or not was irrelevant as far as I was concerned. He seemed depressed but not surprised by my reply.
‘I have to trust you, don’t I?’ he said dolefully.
‘Ned,’ I begged. ‘Go back to work and fix some teeth, will you? I’m leaving here now, anyway.’
I walked off and left him at the Romano-British display. I had a feeling, as I ran down the wide stone steps to the ground floor, that swelling music ought to issue from behind the pillars, but there was only the chatter of children’s voices and the click of Japanese cameras.
I found a post office and posted my cards and by the time I got back to the guest house it was late afternoon, I was hot and tired; I took a shower and collapsed on my bed for a rest before getting ready to go out and eat. I hoped that at least my encounter with Ned at the museum would have persuaded him to step back and let Lisa and me sort things out our way. But unfortunately this wasn’t so, as I found out sooner than I could have anticipated.
I left the house around six thirty and there he was, lurking just down the road, leaning against a garage wall and looking so obvious I wondered someone hadn’t rung the police to report a suspicious character.
‘Now what?’ I groaned.
He fixed me with a belligerent glare and folded his muscular arms across his chest. ‘I’ve just called at the Stallards’. I knew you must have seen Lisa but I hadn’t realised you’d talked your way into the place and met Paul and Jennifer too. They chattered about your visit as if it was the best thing that had happened in weeks, well, since Lisa came home, anyway. After what you said at the museum, I was prepared to give you a chance. But I was right the first time about you.’
‘Ned,’ I said. ‘I can’t stop you ranting on like this. But I’m pretty fed up with falling over you every time I go anywhere. Right now, I’m going to eat. You can come along and talk while I do, if you want. It won’t get you anywhere. But I’m hungry and I don’t see why I should stay hungry hanging about on a street corner arguing with you.’
He looked less belligerent and just a tad pleased with himself. He thought he’d won an important point. No, he’d won a minor one. He’d find out. We went to the wine bar where I’d eaten the previous evening. I had the Greek salad again and he had some pasta. Eating together has the effect of making people relax in one another’s company, hence all those romantic dinners for two or business lunches. On both occasions people agree to things they might not in other circumstances.
I had agreed to listen to Ned but I hadn’t agreed to do any talking. So I set about my Greek salad in silence and, after he’d pushed his pasta spirals around the dish for a while, he realised I wasn’t about to speak and started himself.
‘I’m going to be frank with you,’ he began pompously. ‘I want you to know that I think you and your employer Allerton are both slimy creeps.’
‘He isn’t my employer,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what you call him. But I don’t like being called slimy and, if you don’t take it back, I will pick up that plate of pasta and tip it over your head.’
He believed me. ‘OK,’ he said hastily. ‘I meant Allerton. It’s probably not your fault you’re involved in this. Lisa said Allerton has some hold over you.’
‘He has but it’s none of your business.’
‘Right. I don’t care what it is, anyway. I told you, I’m not interested in you. But if you won’t leave Lisa alone and Allerton won’t either, I’ll go to London and tell him myself to back off.’ He glowered. He meant it, the mutton-headed chump.
‘Believe me, Ned,’ I said earnestly. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea. In the first place, you’d find it difficult to get anywhere near him. In the second place, one of his heavies would throw you out if you tried. They might just break your arm or your leg doing it.’
‘He exploited Lisa!’ Ned declared in ringing tones, gaining us some interested looks from a nearby table.
‘She’s a grown woman,’ I said wearily. ‘It was her decision to take the job.’
‘She took it because she was broke and she couldn’t get work in the legitimate theatre. I don’t know why. She’s a great dancer and she has a super singing voice.’
‘So do dozens of others,’ I said.
‘The Stallards mustn’t know. They wouldn’t understand. It would destroy them. They’re so proud of her. She’s all they have to be happy about. You’ve seen how Paul is. He’s an intelligent man who’s a prisoner in that chair. Jennifer’s life is sp
ent looking after him. They mustn’t find out.’
‘They are not,’ I said, ‘going to find out from me. So relax.’
He’d been getting steamed up and turning red again. He did relax marginally at my words. ‘I know it was her decision to take the job,’ he said. ‘But it’s her decision now to give it up. She got sick of it. Allerton must accept that.’
‘Ned,’ I said. ‘I understand how you feel but, frankly, your feelings don’t come into this. Lisa can tell you what she likes about her job at the Silver Circle and how she feels about it and Allerton. But I’ve already spent more time discussing this with you than I needed to or Allerton would like. From now on, this is strictly a business matter between Allerton, Lisa and me. Got that?’
‘What’s Allerton told you to tell her?’ he demanded, jabbing the fork in my direction and splattering tomato sauce on the table top. ‘What’s he threatening to do?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘My conversation with Mickey Allerton is privileged information.’
‘What the hell does that mean? How can it be privileged? You’re not a doctor or a priest.’
‘No,’ I said unwisely, but he’d been getting to me. I was fed up with listening to him lecture me and I wanted to shut him up. ‘I’m a private detective - of sorts.’
It shut him up all right, for all of two minutes. During it he sat looking at me with his mouth open. I finished my salad while I had the chance.
‘You told Paul and Jennifer you were an actress!’ he burst out accusingly when he’d rallied.
‘We say “actor” these days. I am, but, like Lisa, I’ve found it hard to get work. There are a lot of dancers, a lot of singers and a lot of actors. So I fill in doing whatever I can. Lisa took a job pole dancing. I don’t know how to dance with or without a pole and I don’t have her looks. So I undertake personal work for people.’
‘How can you do that?’ he asked, aghast. ‘How can you snoop on people for money?’
‘Oh, grow up!’ I snapped. ‘Perhaps if I knew how to make false teeth, I would. I don’t, so I earn a living doing what I can do. It’s legal. And I don’t snoop. I’m not that sort of private eye.’
‘You didn’t tell Lisa that, or her parents,’ he accused. ‘You didn’t tell them you were a private detective.’
‘Would you want me to tell them? Wouldn’t they wonder why a private detective had come to the house looking for Lisa?’
He jabbed the fork at me again. More tomato sauce splattered on the table. He was a messy eater. ‘I don’t want you going to the house again, understand?’
Who did he think he was, handing out orders? I wasn’t standing for that.
‘I bet Lisa doesn’t know you’re here, talking to me,’ I said. It was time to make it clear to him he wasn’t getting things all his own way.
He blinked, hesitated, tried for nonchalant, but it didn’t work. ‘Lisa trusts me.’
‘Not to handle her private affairs, she doesn’t. That’s why I’m not wasting another minute on you. I think we’ve said all we’ve got to say to one another.’ I stood up.
‘I was right!’ he burst out furiously. ‘You are just like your boss, Allerton, a seedy, slimy—’
I leaned across the table and tipped what was left of his pasta into his lap. He let out a howl. Heads turned.
‘How dare you?’ I declared loudly. ‘You perv!’ One or two people near us sniggered. Ned, purple with rage and embarrassment, floundered, mopping himself with his napkin and trying to smile placatingly at the approaching waitress at the same time.
In a lower tone I said to him, ‘You can pay the bill. Call it the fee for my professional time.’
‘Just you wait!’ he hissed. The waitress was almost upon us now. ‘I’ll settle this my own way. I can play rough too. Allerton isn’t going to pester Lisa, either through you or anyone else!’
He was mad but I was pretty cross, too, and marched off at a cracking pace heading back towards the boarding house. I hadn’t gone far before I came across an incongruous sight. Mr Filigrew, still in his business suit, was progressing in a stately manner along the pavement with Spencer the poodle on a lead. Filigrew walked very upright, his head held high and his feet turned out like a dancer at the barre. He kept the lead away from him as if in some way dog and lead might contaminate him. Perhaps he worried about dog hairs on his suit.
‘Good evening!’ I greeted him. Spencer recognised me and began to jump about in excitement.
Filigrew turned his rimless spectacles on me. ‘Good evening,’ he said in a disapproving way.
‘Walking the dog for Beryl?’ I patted the ecstatic Spencer.
‘Mm,’ he mumbled, adding, ‘taking a breath of air.’
I beamed at him and left him to take his constitutional. But my smile was strictly for his consumption. I wondered if and where anyone was walking Bonnie in the evening air.
Lisa and I had fixed to meet at ten the next morning. I had decided to set out early partly because I needed to find the place and partly because, when I did so, I wanted to take a good look round first.
Although I was early in the breakfast room, the Americans were there ahead of me, wrangling in their usual manner over what to do that day. There was no avoiding them so I went in and exchanged brief greetings. There was no sign of Mr Filigrew and even after I was all finished, he still hadn’t showed up. As I left the house to make my way to the rendezvous, I checked the breakfast room again, but Filigrew’s table was deserted and showed no sign that anyone had eaten at it. I wondered if he’d left already and was on his way to sell stationery in other towns or whether he was still there and breakfasting in private with Beryl. Possibly there was someone like Beryl in every town on his regular route. I fantasised briefly that he was a bigamist, married to some of these ladies. He was an unlikely looking sex symbol but those are the ones you need to watch. A certain type of woman falls for a man of mature years in a business suit and that flashy tie hinted at hidden depths.
It was a beautiful morning. The sun glowed against the honey-coloured stone of Magdalen College on the other side of the road to the Botanic Gardens. The square baroque building inside the gardens looked gracious if a little knocked about. There was a timelessness about the whole place. In any other circumstances I would have enjoyed being here. Perhaps, if I was lucky and Lisa agreed to speak to Mickey Allerton on the phone, I could wrap up my business here today and linger a little longer before going back to London. Not going round any more old buildings, I’d had my fill of that. But just sitting out somewhere nice and quiet and watching the world go by.
I felt a stab of guilt when I found myself thinking this. What of Bonnie? I had to rescue her at the first opportunity, not loaf round Oxford taking in the dreaming spires. But if all Ganesh had led me to believe was true, Bonnie was doing fine.
The opposite scenario to all this was that Lisa would refuse to speak to Allerton and I’d have to go back to London to admit failure. Things might not then turn out so well. Despite Mickey’s assurance that the only retribution he’d deal out was to refuse me any further payment, I couldn’t be sure he might not think up something nastier. I was sure he didn’t like people letting him down. I still feared Bonnie might pay the price of my failure.
I found Rose Lane, went down it, through the metal gate and found myself on the edge of a huge open area of grass and trees and a fenced playing field, traversed by gravelled walkways. In the hazy morning sunshine I could see the roofs of the surrounding buildings as a distant fringe. That such a place could exist in the middle of a busy city shut away from the hustle and bustle and untouched by any development seemed amazing. But then I always think the same thing of London’s parks.
The tourists had yet to arrive in any numbers and there were comparatively few people around apart from early-morning joggers. Two of these padded past me heading in the opposite direction. They moved as a unit, keeping step and panting in unison, holding their elbows out at identical angles. That and the Oxford connection
made me think of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. A woman in faded jeans, a striped top and colour coordinated waistcoat - the sort of outfit which looks thrown together and actually costs a three-figure sum - walked a spaniel dog. Two more men of academic appearance strolled by deep in discussion. I followed the tree-lined path to the river and set out along it. It was amazingly calm here and very beautiful. Sunspots played on the rippling surface, dotted with leaves fallen from overhead branches. Waterfowl bobbed along as buoyant as corks, darting in and out of the reeds and vegetation at the water’s edge. The trees rustled gently overhead and cast a shade which was welcome even at this relatively early hour. Already clouds of midges swarmed about my face. The only sound was that of my footsteps crunching faintly on the gravelled track.
I looked at my wristwatch. It was only nine forty, twenty minutes to go yet before my meeting with Lisa, if she showed up. She might have decided to cut and run as she’d done from London and be halfway across the country by now. I hoped she showed. I didn’t want to tell Mickey I’d made a complete mess of things. Besides, if she didn’t appear, I’d have to call at her parents’ house again. I’d much prefer not to do that, not because I worried about Ned, but because every meeting with Paul and Jennifer would require an increasing degree of mental agility to obscure the truth. So far I’d told them nothing that wasn’t more or less true. Any more conversation with them and I’d have to start telling outright lies. From then on you have to remember what you’ve said. It can turn out tricky.
