Cobweb

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘It’s either the photo or that bra,’ Patrick said before lifting me up on to the edge of a chest of drawers and deftly removing it together with the other small garment. ‘We’ve never done it like this before,’ he went on, and then his mouth was on mine, my legs around his hips and I found myself penetrated with huge and urgent enthusiasm, paradise commencing.

  Never let it be said that buying things in charity shops is boring.

  For the next three nights we changed the type of venues we visited, going both up- and downmarket, but had no success in finding anyone who looked remotely like the man in the photograph.

  ‘I saw you come in at two thirty this morning,’ said our landlady as she brought in our breakfast on the day after this, her tone making any further comment unnecessary.

  Patrick, who had a slight hangover, said, ‘I’m with the Serious and—’

  She interrupted with, ‘Yes, I know you said you were with the police, but how can I believe that now? I made a point of staying up, actually, as my neighbour told me how you creep in in the early hours looking like the cast of Eastenders. She thinks you’re up to no good and –’ She broke off, probably on account of the gestures of peace Patrick was making with his hands and the beatific smile he was beaming in her direction. He produced his ID card.

  ‘We’re undercover, looking for someone,’ he said. ‘But please don’t tell your neighbour, or anyone else for that matter.’ He showed her the photo of Brocklebank. ‘We’re looking for him.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’ She picked up the photo, took it over to the window and studied it. ‘I’ve a good memory for faces and I’ve seen someone who looks like this somewhere. But not recently, by any means.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Yes, how stupid of me: he must have been one of my patients before I retired.’

  ‘How long have you been retired?’

  ‘About six years. Do you have a name for this man?’

  ‘Brocklebank. But he may use others.’

  ‘That would be difficult with a medical card. Although he might have said he’d lost it. Records weren’t on computers in those days, you see.’

  ‘We need to know where he’s living now. Officially he has a council flat on an estate in Romford but hardly ever goes there. It would appear that he lives a double life.’

  ‘I could ring around a few colleagues,’ she offered.

  ‘We’re more than grateful for anything you could do to help.’

  ‘Do we go for a change of plan, then?’ I asked Patrick later. ‘We’ve had no luck so far. We haven’t even had any run-ins with local godfathers.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget Jo-Jo’s still helping the police with their enquiries and he’s probably number one round here. I suggest we give it one more night and if there are still no developments then have a rethink.’

  ‘How about giving that country-manor hotel, or whatever it was, a try tonight? You said yourself it might be a lead and there’s still no trace of Erin. Not only that – we’ve only two more days before Greenway’s time limit runs out.’

  Patrick agreed, admitting that finding the letter had slipped his mind.

  Thirteen

  The hotel was situated on the edge of a village near the northern boundary of Epping Forest. We had changed our attire and gone upmarket for the occasion, definitely leaving all the bling behind. Patrick was wearing a suit, his partner in a little black dress sans the exaggerated cleavage, which was, I gather, one distraction, or rather two, less for him. With our personal security in mind we had not used our own vehicle but hired one.

  Before leaving, Patrick had left a message for Greenway telling him of our intentions and contacted Paul Boles. The DS had set our hearts racing with the information that monied criminals were sometimes, when not detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, to be found at this particular converted and extended sixteenth-century manor house, complete with its casino, conference suite, three heated swimming pools, tanning and fitness studios and woodland all-terrain bike-racing track.

  ‘A lovely house ruined – it’s going to be horribly brash,’ I lamented as I swung the car into the driveway and glimpsed illuminated fountains and flickering neon signs through the trees that flanked the entrance.

  ‘It sounds spot on to find our man then.’

  ‘I take it one doesn’t have to be a member, or anything like that.’

  ‘No, the hotel’s open to non-residents. I booked a table for dinner. We could even stay the night if they’ve a room and things get interesting.’

  One of the neon signs, the one right above the entrance doors, was pink and included flashing silver stars that formed the words ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROXANNE’.

  ‘Blue for a boy?’ I muttered as we walked beneath it.

  ‘I gather this place was originally built by a favourite of Henry the Eighth,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Probably always been tacky, then.’

  He chuckled. ‘Smile, babe, the security cameras are on yer’ – and proceeded to swagger into a lounge bar, his face wearing what I can only call a ratty smirk. It occurred to me that with his hair smarmed down and loud tie, another of my charity-shop trophies, even his own mother, Elspeth, would not have recognized him.

  The place went in for elaborate cocktails and I was duly and ceremoniously presented with an edifice of fruit, greenery and little parasols that presumably had a drink inside it somewhere. I noted that Patrick’s whisky was a double, but he then, uncharacteristically, put a lot of water into it.

  ‘Look at them,’ he said, back against the bar, facing the room. ‘All phoney and bloody miserable and wondering what to buy next to try to cheer themselves up.’

  The large room, with a conservatory extension to one side which right now was housing the birthday party – raucous, a flock of balloons, girls all bursting out of their dresses – was decorated mostly in gold and crimson and had had any traces of olden days ruthlessly obliterated. The lighting was bright and harsh and, as Patrick had just intimated, most of the people in animated conversation in it – botoxed, breast-implanted, face-lifted, bronzed – looked unhappy. As my glance fell on her, one woman gulped down her drink of what looked like pink gin and tonic and smacked the empty glass down on the table in front of the man she was with. Without even looking at her he rose and darkly came over to the bar to get her another.

  I grazed my way carefully into my own personal tropical jungle, taking my time. ‘Are you going to show the photo of Brocklebank to the barman?’ I enquired quietly.

  Patrick took a sip of his drink. ‘No, I think I’ve already seen him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There’s a notice board just inside the entrance with photos of senior members of staff and head chefs on it. He’s the man at the top, the manager. He might even be the owner.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s him?’

  ‘No, because everyone changes as they age and the picture we have is twenty years old, showing a man with thinning hair. This one’s bald, or shaven-headed.’

  ‘Tanned, fit-looking and not a wrinkle even though getting on for sixty?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’ve always been good at faces.’ I looked at him and he gazed soberly back. ‘This will have to be handled very carefully,’

  ‘Yes, we have to prove it’s Brocklebank – he’s calling himself Rex King, by the way.’

  ‘How tedious of him.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not talking about an educated man. We must prove it’s him while bearing in mind that he’s dangerous – who else could have planted that gizmo in his flat?’

  ‘He used to boast that he could kill anyone, anyhow. Did you book the table in the name of Vernon Studley?’

  I got a wolfish grin. ‘Too right.’

  ‘So we wait a while. If nothing happens, what then?’

  ‘We stir things gently, what else?’

  That probably meant start a small war.

  At the arranged time – eight th
irty – we went through into the restaurant – artificial palm trees, blue-plastic water cascades falling into plastic-lined ponds with plastic fish in them – which was very busy and where another party was in progress, a retirement one by the look of the ages of those attending. But it was no less noisy for that and in the middle of the main course a woman, loud- and foul-mouthed, obviously sloshed, celebrated herself right off her chair into an elaborate, and again artificial, floor-standing flower arrangement. Every which way, red knickers and all, she was resurrected, placed inert on a chair and discreetly lugged away by her male companion and members of staff, presumably to a taxi.

  ‘Go on, you’re not Ingrid Langley tonight,’ Patrick said, eyes sparkling and perceiving that I was struggling to keep a straight face, adding lugubriously and none too quietly, ‘After all, the old cow might be stone dead.’

  So, regrettably, we both howled with laughter, thus earning the repugnance of the entire assembly. One member of the party was all ready to come over and remonstrate with us but was pulled back into his seat by his companions.

  Good: we looked the part, then.

  Exercising caution in case there was trouble, we ate lightly and sparingly – which was a shame, as the food was surprisingly good – and drank only water. Afterwards we were asked if we would like to have our coffee in the lounge. This turned out to be a smaller side room situated some distance down a corridor in the hotel sector that had a real log fire. We were the only occupiers.

  The waiter had set the coffee things down on a table near the fire and I gravitated over to it while Patrick prowled around the room – something he always does when in strange surroundings but already suspicious because of the lack of others present. I poured the coffee and he wandered back.

  ‘I could do with a fag,’ he said. ‘Left ’em at home.’

  The obvious telling of lies is one of our warning codes. Had he spotted some covert surveillance?

  ‘Go and buy some at the bar, then,’ I snapped pretend-bad-temperedly.

  He sprawled into an armchair. ‘Nah, can’t be bothered. Time I gave up.’ His gaze fixed upon the coffee. ‘Come on then, girl – two sugars.’

  I duly spooned them in. He does not take sugar now, so this was a message to me that he had no intention of drinking it. Hairs stirring on the back of my neck, I therefore knew I must not drink mine either, but behaved normally, passing his across, sugaring and stirring mine for something to do. I knew Patrick was armed, but circumstances had changed. We no longer worked for MI5: there were different rules of engagement now and firearms could not be used unless the situation became really desperate.

  A couple of minutes later the door opened and a man entered. He was bronzed, fit-looking, with not a wrinkle, and had the rapacious demeanour of a healthy pack of hyenas. If this was not Clem Brocklebank – despite the shaven head there was a very strong likeness to the picture we had deliberately left behind – then I would go home and knit dishcloths for the rest of my days.

  ‘You’re Studley?’ he said, coming over to us.

  Patrick, who was already on his feet, eyed the incomer up and down and delivered the necessary time-honoured response. ‘Who’s asking?’

  The other smirked and held out a hand. ‘Rex King. I own this place. This is one of my private sitting rooms.’

  Patrick ignored the hand. ‘Have we spat in an ashtray or something?’

  ‘No, not at all. No, I read about you in the paper and I believe we have something in common.’

  Again Patrick looked the man up and down, only incredulously this time. (He was once offered a part in a film.) ‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘OK, you can join us,’ he went on say as King seated himself. He affected to notice me. ‘This is my friend Sapphire.’

  Sapphire simpered suitably.

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?’ King wanted to know.

  ‘It’s got a funny smell, as though someone’s shat in it,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Shall I get you some more?’

  ‘No, thanks. And I don’t like being on surveillance cameras while I’m drinking it.’

  King shrugged. ‘I understand you’re hoping to gain a hold in this area.’

  ‘What if I do?’

  ‘You won’t be able to do anything without my co-operation.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Patrick asked, all innocence.

  ‘I run things around here. Not obviously, and the cops don’t have a clue about me, but what I say goes.’

  ‘You talk like the soundtrack from an old B-movie,’ he was told.

  I thought that King was also taking a terrible risk. Was it as I thought and he was desperate to parade himself in the criminal underworld – was fed up with not being, as he put it, obvious?

  The bonhomie started to slip away. ‘I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of you,’ he said. ‘And I thought I knew all the big names in this game.’

  ‘You’re still reading it from a script. That’s because Vernon Studley’s not my real name. It even said that in the local rag.’

  ‘OK, I believe you. I can offer you a lot if you agree to certain conditions.’

  ‘Call you sir, you mean?’ Patrick said with a sneer.

  King sat forward suddenly. ‘Don’t play around with me. People who do or who get in my way don’t get very far. I don’t involve others to tell tales either. I deal with things – personally.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  ‘Take it any way you like.’

  Ye gods, they still sounded like an old Al Capone film.

  ‘Your conditions then are what?’ Patrick enquired heavily.

  ‘How many can you call upon?’

  ‘Any number. But I don’t go around with a pile of hangers-on. That’s messy and unprofessional.’

  ‘No boys to watch your back?’

  ‘No, I watch my own back – unless I’m actually on a job.’

  ‘I watch his back,’ I said.

  King chuckled indulgently. ‘OK, darlin’.’ To Patrick he said, ‘You put some of your men under my control when I ask for assistance.’

  Patrick appeared to think about it. Then, ‘Agreed,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘I take a share of your proceeds if I’m going through a thin patch.’

  ‘No. You’re not living off me. No one lives off me. Besides, you’ve got this dump.’

  ‘In return for which I give you a take when I get a good run of money.’

  There was a short silence and then Patrick said, ‘A bloke calling himself Jo-Jo offered me a similar deal quite recently. I arranged for the police to raid his place.’

  ‘Jo-Jo!’ King whooped. ‘He was one of my errand boys – a nobody and turning into another nuisance. You did me a favour – unless he decides to bleat, of course. But I doubt it; he’ll want to keep his head attached to his shoulders.’

  ‘Whatever you say the cops aren’t going to stay asleep for ever and any arrangement we make might only be short-term. No, I’d rather stay independent and go hungry – only I won’t.’

  King relaxed back in his chair. ‘The cops who aren’t asleep tend to have … accidents.’

  ‘Is that what you meant when you said you deal with things personally?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Patrick whispered, and the other man’s eyes glowed.

  ‘Hear about a DCI whose car went off a motorway bridge earlier in the year?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Name of Harmsworth. He was becoming a real nuisance, so I got rid of him.’ King’s hand went into his pocket and I saw Patrick go as taut as a bowstring. ‘There you are. I brought it specially to show you. That’s his watch. I always take little keepsakes.’

  It lay there, in the palm of his hand, the wind-up watch from the RAC, the hands stopped at two thirty-five. Then King’s fingers closed over it possessively.

  ‘And his sidekick,’ King continued, ‘– although he might not have been really on to me, I just got in the mood to take control of t
he local filth. I took the computer that time – thought there might be useful stuff on it. One of my staff is a real geek with computers and hacked into it, but it was all rubbish – his holidays and plants and notes on growing veg and things like that.’

  Patrick shrugged dismissively. ‘I can only remember something about an MP meeting a messy end somewhere in the sticks out here. Was that you too?’

  King laughed, genuinely amused. ‘God, no. He was knocked off by a junkie desperate for a fix. Why would I want to kill one MP? – they’re all a waste of space, so once started you’d have to take out the lot.’

  ‘Well, you might have got in the mood to take control again,’ Patrick said, the irony in his tone utterly lost on the other.

  ‘No, it’s got to be really useful. To me. My time’s valuable. That’s why I’m talking to you now, so I don’t meet you one night when you’re least expecting it to settle things in more unfriendly fashion. Be warned, though: I don’t do things in obvious ways; I leave little souvenirs of my own as I move through life to teach people to stay away from me.’

  ‘You’re thinking about the future,’ Patrick observed grimly. ‘Say things like that and you won’t have a future.’

  I thought it about time that a girl like Sapphire would start to lose her nerve. ‘Don’t talk of killing,’ I pleaded. ‘Please settle things nicely.’

  Predictably, they both totally ignored me.

  ‘All the staff here are my trained bodyguards,’ King said, not taking his eyes off Patrick for a moment, ‘– men and women. I only have to shout.’

  ‘You’re all talk and you’d be dead before you shouted,’ Patrick said in a flat whisper.

  ‘A man was found hanged in the nick a few days ago,’ King said. ‘Did you hear about that or don’t you ever read the bloody papers or switch on the TV?’