“I’ll say so! He’s been crossing the Atlantic since he was two years old. In his young years he spent several months of every year in Europe. Two or more summers were spent at school in Germany. We have the only American president ever to be arrested four times in one day by the German police!”
“Arrested?” Joe was alarmed and curious in equal measure.
“Say rather—caught and warned. For picking cherries, running over a goose and two cycling offences. Par for the course for a fifteen-year-old let loose on a bicycle in a foreign country.”
“Ah! That other carefree world before the war,” said Cottingham, shaking his moustache in a rush of Edwardian nostalgia.
“He’s been back since. Constantly. His wife, Eleanor, was the first woman to be allowed a formal visit to the Front after the Armistice to witness the devastation.”
“Ouch!” Cottingham made his disapproval clear. “And a harrowing time was had by all? No place for a woman!”
“She’s a very special lady,” Kingstone said with a grin. “Now—if she’d been there at the Front two years earlier—and in an executive position—there might have been a better outcome. Her husband is no isolationist as far as his personal choices go. With communications at the level we see them these days—he’s practically sitting at this table with us, gentlemen.”
Not sure whether they’d just heard a lightening of mood or a tightening of screws, they wished him a good evening, all guessing that he was secretly retiring to wait for Natalia to return. Cottingham got to his feet and left the bar a minute ahead of his charge in a well-practised routine.
“Does that bloke ever get any relief?” Armitage asked. “The Super, I mean.”
“He’ll go home when he’s checked the night shift unit’s in place upstairs. We’re the round-the-clock mugs who’ll be red-eyed by midnight.”
“You’re expecting her to come back, aren’t you?”
“Natalia, do you mean?” Joe asked innocently. He was quick enough to catch the swiftly suppressed grimace of annoyance. “Or were you thinking of Julia?” He glanced unemphatically at his wristwatch. “Oh, yes, Julia is on her way back right now.” He’d identified the anxiety that prompted the question and thought he understood the reason for it. “There was no sign she was expecting to stay away. Quite the reverse. She was carrying only the smallest of handbags, did you notice? A black leather clutch purse hardly big enough to accommodate a toothbrush. And she took rather elaborate steps to establish an alibi for her absence tonight. The early evening showing of King Kong at the Leicester Square Empire, where I think she’ll say she’s been, runs from five to seven on a Friday, according to our obliging receptionist. So, allowing for the usual Friday night traffic, we might expect her to be back in time for supper any minute, no doubt shaking with horror at the death and destruction she’s just seen on screen! Shall I ask for a table for three?”
Armitage nodded without much enthusiasm.
“We’ll seduce her with Dover Sole, sozzle her with Sancerre and then put her to the question. We’ll find out what she was up to in Marylebone and when very precisely she last set eyes on Miss Kirilovna. Look, Bill, I’m going to take a back seat and let you speak to her. I appear not to impress the lady but I think she’s fallen for your rugged Yankie charm. But let me pop an ace up your sleeve. You ought to hear that she slipped out last night and went to see that very film. We had her followed. It should be still fresh in her mind when she speaks of it on her return and she’ll use it to set up an alibi for tonight’s excursion. The girl’s clearly an amateur. Though I do wonder what made her think she could lead the combined forces of the CID and the FBI down the garden path! You could trip her up with one well-placed question, Bill. Well, play it how you think best. Shall we go and prop up the bar and have a cocktail while we’re waiting? We’ll be more visible there to anyone who wants to greet us. I’m having another of these, how about you? A martini? Of course.”
She joined them boldly at the bar, pushing between them, only moments later. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleaming with excitement. Her hair smelled of cheap cigarettes, as though it had caught and filtered the thick atmosphere of a picture house. Or the upper deck of a London bus, Joe thought, cynically.
“I’ll have a ‘gin and it,’ if anyone’s offering,” she said. “Blimey! You need something to steady the nerves after all that screaming.”
“Screaming?” Joe asked. “My dear! What on earth have you been up to?”
“There were two of ’em at it. One was Fay Wray. And the other voice I heard was mine! I had to dab my eyes with my hanky at the end where that poor old ape gets shot to bits and drops dead off the skyscraper.” She pushed a quizzical face up close to Joe’s. “Have I made my mascara run?”
“Yes, you have. But don’t worry about it—it gives you the huge-eyed, innocent look of my spaniel. Flossie always gets away with whatever it is she’s done. Hold still a minute.” He held her steady by the shoulder with one hand, licked his thumb and smoothed away with a sculptor’s gesture a black smear under her eye. He would play her flirtatious game a little longer. “I guess you’re talking about King Kong?”
“Have you seen it? It’s on at the Empire.”
Joe admitted that he had.
“I saw it in New York before we sailed,” said Armitage. “Come and tell me what you thought of it.” He tucked her arm under his and led her away to a table while Joe summoned up fresh drinks and wasted time at the bar observing the two of them. They were talking a lot and smiling freely. Joe guessed that Armitage was leading her on, waiting for the right moment to trip her up. In her guilt and confusion she might let slip something useful. Too easy. Joe expected that the sergeant would wait until Joe was in earshot before he made his move.
They were still involved in a detailed appreciation of the film as he approached. Joe decided to test the girl’s memory and give Armitage a further opening. “Ah!” he said, setting down their glasses and making an attempt at a tough American voice: “Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and, bang, he cracks up and goes soppy.”
They turned surprised faces to him and with one voice corrected him: “sappy!” They resumed their criticism of the script.
“That line comes quite early on,” Armitage offered. “It gets better. I liked the scene at the end where the guy looks at the body of the ape and says: Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes … it was Beauty killed the Beast.” Julia supplied the response and they laughed.
“A lesson we beasts should take to heart, Bill,” Joe said lightly to cover his irritation. He decided to try again. “Hang on a minute. Can I have got this wrong?” He produced a small notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. “I’m sure I had a call from police HQ … some request for emergency staffing … Yes, here we are: an incident at the Empire. Bomb hoax or some such. I had to divert an element of the Flying Squad—all we had available. They had to close and evacuate the theatre in mid-performance tonight at six o’clock.” He turned a questioning face to Julia and watched as her animation faded. She took a large gulp of her gin and began to cough. Time wasting. But he recognised—he found he was relieved to recognise—all the reactions of an amateur liar. Under her bluff and bluster, he calculated there was hiding a very frightened girl. The kind who would crack in five minutes and tell you all you wanted to know.
It was Armitage who responded. “No, you’re not wrong. It was the Empire all right. But the Empire, Hackney. Bit of a rathole,” he explained kindly to Julia. “They’re always having problems. Someone sets the seats on fire, sticks a knife in someone’s ribs. I used to go over and sort them out when I was a police constable with the Met. I’d have thought you’d have closed it down by now.”
“We’re over-tolerant of criminality—I hear that often. Yes, you’re right, Bill. The Hackney Empire goes along on its rackety way, causing problems as it ever did,” Joe said easily, conceding defeat.
&nb
sp; Armitage had refused the same easy fence three times. A disqualification in anyone’s book.
Joe gulped down the remains of his whisky sour and, with a dry smile, prepared to make his excuses and leave the two of them to spend their evening deceiving each other.
Before he could find the words, a page boy scurried to their table. “Mr. Sandilands? I’ve got a note for Mr. Sandilands. The gent said it was urgent.”
Joe took the note from the tray and read it in silence. He passed it to Armitage, who leapt to his feet, muttering, “Come on, Julia! We’re wanted upstairs.”
He grabbed the girl by her arm and practically carried her along to the lift with Joe making a way for them through the press of people arriving for dinner. On the way up, Joe read again the scrawled note from Kingstone. Joe! Get here! Bring William and Julia.
They entered the silent corridor on the third floor, both men adopting the cat-like movements of a team approaching a possible ambush. Joe located the CID man left on guard who mimed in some surprise that there had been nothing untoward going on and that it was safe to approach. Armitage, nevertheless, drew his gun and distanced Julia from the door of Kingstone’s suite by a few yards. The girl nodded, understanding his gestures.
Joe took up his place opposite Armitage at the door jamb, knocked lightly and called out the senator’s name. To their relief, Kingstone’s voice rang out in reply. “It’s all right. I’m alone. I’m coming to open the door.”
The senator was certainly not the subject of ambush or attempted killing but there could be no doubt that he was suffering anguish. He pulled them inside and closed and locked the door behind them. He’d taken off his jacket and tie and was evidently preparing to settle down as he’d said he intended, to work at his desk. A tray of lobster and salad, enough for two, Joe noted, sat untouched on a low table along with champagne in a silver bucket.
“It’s over there on the dressing table,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “I don’t know when it was delivered. And perhaps that’s something you ought to be asking yourself, Sandilands. I thought there was security in operation in this hotel. I only just noticed it. When I went to take off my collar. Take a look.” And, unsteadily, he added: “Not you, Julia! It’s not pretty.”
Joe slipped on a pair of white evening gloves from his pocket, picked up the box and examined the outside. Plain gold wrapping paper was almost intact. A label swung from a matching gold ribbon, bearing the name of a west-end chocolate shop. Kingstone had slit the paper neatly with a paper knife to open it.
He read the message in Joe’s frowning eyebrows. “I know! I know! Should have left it alone until one of you guys vouched for it. Lucky it didn’t blow up in my face. What’s in there’s a whole lot more subtle than explosive. They’re the ones I like—those chocolates. They’re what Natty always buys me. I took it for a sign that she’d come back and left it there for me to find while she went looking for me. A making-up present. Sort of thing she does. I thought there might be a note inside. You know—in those fancy shops they always offer you the chance of writing something smart on a little card. Well, someone’s done that all right …” He ground to a halt, unable to go on.
Certain that he knew what he was about to uncover, Joe steeled himself and shot a warning glance at Armitage. Kingstone put a detaining hand on Julia’s shoulder, holding her at some distance from the package. Joe wondered briefly why the American had requested her presence since he seemed determined not to let her get a sight of whatever was lurking in the box.
“Fingerprints?” Armitage suggested.
“Probably not worth bothering,” Joe muttered. “Professional care will have been taken if this is what I think it is. But we’ll go through the motions and do it by the book shall we, Sarge?” The familiar old rank and the polite formula of command slipped out before he could stop himself.
Armitage seemed not to notice. He certainly didn’t object and hurried to fetch a towel from the bathroom and spread it over a coffee table to receive the box and wrappings.
The outer layers removed and the lid lifted, the two policemen stared in fascination and disgust at the contents.
Remembering the pathologist’s phrase, Joe murmured: “Digitus primus pedis. I think that’s what we have here.” Even to his ears it sounded pompous but the Latin term was all he could summon up to cloak in dignity the sorry little piece of flesh and bone. Nestling inside the chocolate box, it looked as pathetic as a scrap of offal from a pet-food bin under a butcher’s counter. “You saw this, Kingstone?”
“It’s her toe, isn’t it? Natty’s? What lunatic bastard would cut off her toe and send it to me? They took her and held her and … Did they kill her first? What kind of an operation are you running, Sandilands, where such a thing could happen? Look—I want Armiger here to deal with this. Should have insisted right from the start.” Kingstone was beside himself with rage and pain. “They snatched her, tortured her and sent part of her back here in evidence right under your nose! And it’s not as if it’s her little finger! Oh, no! You know what this is saying? It’s saying she’ll never dance again … which means she’ll never truly live again … even supposing they’ve left the rest of her alive.”
Julia shook herself free from his grasp. “Toe? Natalia’s? No! Can’t be!” For a moment Joe thought she would collapse but, recovering a little, she stood upright and breathed deeply. “I see now why you asked me to come up, Cornelius. You’re going to ask me to identify it? Yes?”
He nodded dumbly.
“I can see why you’d need help. It’s hardly the part of her anatomy you took most notice of.”
Joe flinched at the barbed comment, though Kingstone, in his numbed state, appeared not to notice the rudeness or the familiarity.
“But her toes—I’d know them. I’ve been bandaging and massaging them for her since we were eight years old. Not promising anything, mind, but if you two will shove over a bit and let me take a look …”
She bent over the grotesque offering displayed on the gold tray, thankfully emptied of its original contents. To Joe’s horror, without warning, Julia picked up the object between her thumb and forefinger and stared at it, turning it this way and that.
“I don’t know. I honestly can’t say. She doesn’t have her initials tattooed on it, you know. Have you smelled it? Formalin, would that be? You can just make it out over the turkish delight. My God! I’ll never eat chocolate again!” On the point of gagging, she recovered herself sufficiently to go on: “It’s been in a jar somewhere. This thing could have been amputated from anyone, any time ago. A hospital involved? They get rid of dozens of corpses every day. That looks like a very clean cut to me. It’s probably shrunk and it’s definitely started to decay. I wouldn’t recognise it if were my own. Impossible to identify it.” She turned to the senator. “I’d ignore it, Mr. Kingstone. Some loony’s having you on. Trying to give you the screaming willies. Who’ve you been annoying?”
“I’m afraid he can’t ignore it,” Joe said. “Look, the sender’s put a little note in underneath.” He took out a small greetings card bearing two lines of calligraphed writing in a dense black ink and looked towards Kingstone. “Arrogant toad!” he commented. “Where are the letters carefully cut from the Daily Mirror headlines? The disguised faux-left-handed scrawl? No attempt at a concealment here. I’m only surprised he didn’t sign it.”
“You’ll need to catch him before you can make a match,” Armitage confirmed. “He clearly expects not to be caught.”
The senator shuddered and waved a hand, indicating that Joe should read it out.
“ ‘This was the most unkindest cut of all.’
But not the last, senator?”
“That’s from ‘Julius Caesar.’ Mark Antony’s rabble-rousing speech about treachery,” Kingstone muttered, deep in thought.
“It seems we’re dealing with a joker with literary pretensions,” Joe said.
“An English joker,” Kingstone concluded. “An American would have correct
ed the Bard’s grammar.” He gave a barking laugh that unnerved the others. “And he goes on, in that speech, to say:
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.”
Disturbed by his words and the haunted look in the senator’s eye, Joe picked up his thought and carried it further. “Treason. Ah, yes. He has much to say on the subject in that play. An old-fashioned word, treason.” He let the idea dangle between them.
“No. It’s never out of fashion. Just rarely used, thank God. But it’s ever present, lurking in the shadows, dagger in hand and apologia in mouth.”
Armitage was growing impatient. “Oh, come on! I wouldn’t read too much into this bit of mischief. Everyone knows that line and our bird couldn’t resist the idea of the ‘unkindest cut’—her being a dancer an’ all. But it’s more likely a case of ‘all sound and fury, signifying nothing’ if you ask me.”
Julia replaced the object in the box. “Well if you fellers are just going to stand about slapping each other in the chops with quotations, I’ll ask to be excused. I’ll just pop next door and do what ladies do when they’ve been handling a dead digitus.” They listened in silence while she went through to Natalia’s rooms and water pipes began to gurgle. Joe guessed that the duration and frequency of the gurgles betrayed a reaction more fundamental than a need to wash hands.
Before he divulged the whole of his knowledge of this sorry affair, Joe knew he had to exploit this moment of unbalance, to press the distressed but devious Kingstone as far as he could. “You are being threatened in some way, sir. Blackmailed? Coerced? The words: ‘But not the last?’ imply that further mutilation might occur—perhaps in an incremental manner? The question mark suggests that the decision to allow more unkind cuts may lie with you. I’m wondering what you have to do or say to stop the butchery. I don’t think you were aware of any threat to Natalia’s well-being this morning when we spoke. When I trailed the possibility of Natalia’s being treated as a missing person, you dismissed it. Rather emphatically. I concluded that you had a good idea where she was and were not concerned. That I had blundered, unwanted, into a lovers’ tiff. Do you now deny this?”
A Spider in the Cup Page 12
