‘And so you should be!’ marvelled the young policeman, as his gaze took in the graceful, arched roof of the central part of the shop. Made entirely of glass, alternating with slim, wooden spread-ribs to provide support, it allowed light to flood down, both into the main room and into a number of little alcoves which fanned off it, each with its own bookcase, reading desk, and lamp.
Unexpectedly for such a large space, the atmosphere was one of quiet, ordered calm, despite the numerous customers, either browsing quietly, or being served by one of the assistants. Each of the latter were easily spotted in their ‘uniform’ of dark blue shirt, bottle-green tie and black trousers. Every wall was fronted by a bookcase. But not, Calderwood noted, ordinary bookcases. Each was obviously carved by craftsmen, the soft honey-gold of the wood almost luminous in the light flooding in through the windows; beautiful – and very expensive, he realised.
‘Come through to my office, Inspector. We can talk without being interrupted there,’ Edgar added, having asked their preference for tea or coffee and passing on the information to an assistant. He ushered them into a large room at the rear of the shop itself; again, a room flooded with light. More bookcases covered three walls; the fourth framed a large bow window in front of which was an elegant desk. Georgian, noted the DI. The desk’s surface was extremely neat and, apart from a solid silver inkwell and an accompanying, equally solid-looking, silver paper knife, almost entirely empty. If the office possessed such a modern vulgarity as a telephone, it was well hidden. Clearly money hadn’t been a problem, Calderwood thought. I wonder if that’s still true? he wondered, well aware of the ravages to the traditional book trade caused by the supermarkets and the internet.
‘So, how can I help you?’ Edgar asked, once they were seated.
‘As you know, sir, we’re looking into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance, and elopement, of your father and Miss Kujenikov...’ Calderwood began.
‘Events which took place fifty years ago, when I was a boy of sixteen!’ observed the bookseller wryly. ‘A long time ago and occurring at a time when, like all teenagers, I was totally engrossed in my own affairs, to the exclusion of virtually everything, and everybody, else,’ he added, smiling slightly.
‘Indeed,’ acknowledged the DI. ‘However, I would have thought that your father’s elopement, and the circumstances leading up to it, were dramatic enough events to make even a sixteen-year-old, however self-engrossed, aware of something unfolding,’ responded Calderwood coolly.
‘Possibly, but if that boy had spent the last fifty years obliterating any memories from that time, Inspector, then little is perhaps recallable’ responded Edgar calmly, with a smiling shake of his head, as he played with the paper knife.
‘Nevertheless, sir, we’d appreciate it if you could take us through what you can recall,’ Calderwood pressed firmly.
‘Yes, of course; you must do your job, I understand that. I must admit I was a little annoyed after you’d phoned, due, I think, to my reluctance to be reminded about it all.’ He paused, then went on. ‘In truth, there’s little I can recall, beyond an imperfectly remembered, but very acute, feeling of unhappiness.’
‘Unhappiness that your father was having an affair, or that he and Ariana disappeared?’ probed Calderwood.
‘Neither, if I’m being honest,’ responded Edgar frankly.
‘No distress at losing your father; no outrage at his betrayal of your mother; no anger at his leaving his family?’
‘No, none of the above, I’m afraid,’ responded the older man with a touch of humour.
‘How about your feelings toward Ariana? Any anger, say, at her role in the affair?’
‘Again, no,’ Edgar replied, breaking off, as an assistant brought in their coffees and, Bulmer was delighted to see, a large plate of assorted biscuits.
‘Such a lack of any emotion is a little unusual, sir, would you not agree?’ Calderwood said, hiding his surprise.
‘Yes, I would agree, but, you see, I’d already succeeded in distancing myself from my family, so those events were of little interest to me. I also had, other than a period in my mid teens when I was intensely interested in the technical aspects of productions and rather pestered the technical guys in the lighting box, little or no interest in the theatre.’
‘From what you’re saying, it seems that this feeling of, what – distance? estrangement? detachment? – wasn’t merely a product of the usual teenage angst. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, very much so. It was a feeling that had been growing on me for sometime, and indeed has continued to this day!’
‘Was this estrangement triggered by any specific event?’
‘No, nothing specific, I’d always felt distant from the family, parents, brother sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole pack of them, with the exceptions of Daniel, and Arabelle, from as far back as I can recall. My parents were convinced that I was lacking some essential component in my personality; something which stopped me functioning “normally” as they put it. Somewhat bluntly for my family, I must confess!’ he added, with a small laugh.
‘We tended to be more elliptic, not to say, serpentine, in our dealings with each other,’ he added. ‘I was inclined to agree with them, that I wasn’t, in their words, “normal”. That is, until I broke free,’ he continued, ‘built my own life, changed my name, which was, for me, the final severing of the umbilical, and married my first wife. I knew then, that whatever the reasons for my disinterest in my family were, they weren’t that I couldn’t “feel”. I loved Anne dearly and we were very close, almost soul-mates, right up to the day she died,’ he ended, his voice breaking slightly.
‘How long ago was that?’ Calderwood asked gently, moved by the other man’s obvious distress.
‘Fifteen years,’ Edgar responded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said a little shakily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘It still seems so recent,’ he added. ‘I remarried eight years ago,’ he continued, after a few moments, ‘so count myself very lucky to have found another woman I love as dearly as I did Anne. She’s a pianist. You may have heard of her – Yvette Mancini?’
‘Indeed I have!’ replied Calderwood, genuinely impressed. ‘I saw her play at the Barbican a couple of years ago. I was sorry to hear, just after that, that she’d decided to retire from performing; a great loss to us all,’ he added.
‘Yes,’ nodded Edgar, ‘I couldn’t agree more, but...’ he paused, then continued.
‘It’s not general knowledge, but she has Muscular Sclerosis. It’s in its very early stages, thank heaven, but it’s progressed to the point that it’s effecting her playing.’
‘Really? She seemed in top form when I heard her,’ the young DI said in surprise.
‘Oh yes, she would,’ agreed Edgar. ‘She still would, if you heard her play today, to your ears or mine, at any rate,’ he added. ‘But not to hers, you see,’ he continued. ‘She’d spent many years training and had reached an astonishing level of perfection. When she felt she’d begun to slip below that level, she quite simply wasn’t prepared to continue.’
‘I can understand that, I think,’ Calderwood responded quietly. ‘You mentioned your cousin, Daniel,’ he continued, after a moment, ‘as one exception to your general disinterest in your family. Were you and he close?’
‘To an extent, but he was almost three years older than myself; a huge gulf when one’s that young! But I admired him and we did have a lot in common.’
‘Such as?’
‘First and foremost, I think, was that we were both pushing against the familial boundaries; we had a shared unwillingness of letting the families decide our futures; or our presents, come to that,’ Edgar added, after a moment’s thought.
‘I understand that some family members disapproved of his artistic ambitions. Not to mention the way he went about funding them,’ Calderwood remarked.
Edgar shrugged. ‘As in any family, there was a lot of jealousy around and much of it surrounded Daniel. He was so
mewhat more gifted than... certain others of his contemporaries, so it was inevitable. As for his unorthodox method of funding himself, well,’ Edgar shrugged, ‘as he said, it was merely an advance on what he would one day get anyway. He was doubly fortunate, of course, as had he actually waited to receive his inheritance, he’d have found it gone and he’d have got only a fraction of what he’d been led to believe he would get; as the rest of us were soon to discover!’ he added, with a brittle smile.
‘I understood that the children’s trusts couldn’t be touched,’ Calderwood remarked.
Edgar nodded. ‘They couldn’t, but it was family tradition for each trust, which was comparatively modest, to be topped up, usually doubled, by general family money, of which, suddenly, there was substantially less!’
‘How did you yourself stand, as regards the trust and the extra family money?’ Calderwood asked, his voice carefully neutral.
‘You mean did my very clear – and frequently expressed! – indifference to my family, extend to its money?’ Edgar responded with a thin smile. ‘To be honest, I was still mulling that one over, when my attitude became entirely academic, once my father ran off with most of it! Fortunately the trust, and some money my first wife had, are still sufficient to enable me to retire, should I ever wish to.’
‘Fair enough,’ Calderwood nodded. ‘Have you heard anything from Daniel or, indeed, your father and Miss Kujenikov, since the theatre closed?’ On Edgar shaking his head, he went on. ‘And finally, I’m curious: why did you go to the trouble of actually changing your family name?’
Edgar shrugged. ‘It was the final step for me to shake off the last of the family dust, so to speak. I probably wouldn’t have done it, but my father’s running off with a girl young enough to be his daughter, after so publicly capering round her like a very randy, and rather demented old goat, was the final straw!’
Chapter 22
‘Guv, they’ve opened the can and it is old film!’ Bulmer said excitedly, as he entered the general office the next morning and took his seat for the day’s first team briefing.
‘Is it viewable?’ Calderwood asked, his excitement mirroring that of his DS.
‘The tech guys say yes, though they don’t know what the quality will be. They’ll do what they can when they transfer it to DVD. We should be able to view it in the next couple of days!’
‘Excellent! Even if it doesn’t give us all the answers, we’ll hopefully get some pointers. We could certainly do with a few,’ Calderwood added with a small smile, as he turned to begin the case review. ‘OK, everyone. As you know, in view of the way the case is developing, we’ve been given extra resources, so welcome to those of you new to the team,’ he added, nodding at the new members. ‘To be sure that we’re all talking the same language, I’ll treat this as the very first briefing, so my apologies to those who’ve already heard some of this.’ He paused and then continued.
‘It’s three days since the discovery of the suspended figure, which may, or may not, be the actual body of Ariana Kujenikov, a young girl who, for the last fifty years, was believed to have eloped with her employer, Gerald DeLancy. It’s two days since the discovery of what most definitely is a body and which is definitely male. A working hypothesis must be that it’s the missing theatre owner. We’d expected to have the DNA results by now, certainly for the male body, but unfortunately there’s been some kind of hitch and they will now not be with us for another day or two. As, however, the body had certainly been restrained, we know we have at least one murder so, in the short term, whether the suspended figure is Ariana or not and whether the male body actually is, or is not, Gerald DeLancy, makes little difference to how we proceed. As you all know, in between being with me when we interviewed the six surviving family members, DS Bulmer has been overseeing the SOCO team’s work in the old theatre; so, Colin, if you can brief us on how that’s progressing, that’s a good starting point, I think,’ he ended, turning to his deputy.
Bulmer nodded and standing in front of the long whiteboard covering almost an entire wall, he opened a file and started his briefing.
‘Most of the theatre has now been searched and, at this point, the crime scene doesn’t seem to extend beyond the main stage itself and the areas immediately adjacent to it, i.e. the office side-stage and the box in which the body was found. The searches of the remaining areas will be completed by tomorrow. A fair amount of stuff has already been bagged and is on its way, initially to County HQ, for further analysis.
So far, we have eight aspects which are of immediate interest. Firstly, and obviously, are what appear to be two bodies, and the apparent significance behind their being very specifically placed as they were. The second aspect is the numerous photographs found in the small office. There are thirty eight in all,’ he continued, pointing to where they were attached to the board, ‘and they are all of Ariana. The two that are of most interest, are these, ‘ he added, indicating the two damaged pictures.’ As you can see, they have been slashed and slashed again, for reasons we can, as yet, only speculate on. The third aspect is what we’ve just had confirmed is a can of film. It’s marked “Ariana”, so we assume it will contain images of the dancer, but, almost as important, it may also have on it clues to whoever did the filming.
‘A fourth, and distinctly less tangible, area of interest are the fingerprints obtained from the scene. As you can imagine, being a theatre and thus a public space, we’re not short of old prints on a whole range of surfaces – and almost all of the prints we do salvage will have absolutely no relevance to the crime or crimes committed! Additionally, as virtually every surface is covered with a thick layer of dust, many will, even if they’re reachable, almost certainly be un-useable. That said, a few are recoverable and we’ve already got some surprisingly clear ones from, for example, some of these,’ he continued, pointing to the photographs pinned up behind him. ‘However, bar one or two, very faint, prints and half-prints on the underside of the plastic orb, where comparatively little dust had gathered, there are none either on, or immediately around it. The same goes for the body in the box and the area immediately around him. At this point, we’re assuming the surfaces in both areas were deliberately wiped clean.
‘Curiously, and this is the fifth aspect, another area wiped clean, or almost so, is a small door below the stage, i.e. away from the main crime scene. Another curious feature, which I’ve just had reported, is that the nails holding it shut from the outside, appear to have been used twice, or rather been nailed in and then, for some reason, taken out and hammered back in again. The team will progressively take more prints from throughout the theatre as deemed necessary, but, as with those in the immediate areas of interest, many will either remain unidentified or be of little or no use, even when matched to a specific individual. Though we can but hope.’ He added this ruefully and Calderwood nodded, not realising how wrong his deputy was, nor that he, himself, would soon be left, equally ruefully, mulling over the old saying about being extremely careful what you wish for.
Chapter 23
‘Finally,’ Bulmer concluded, ‘if the body turns out not to be his, a photograph of Gerald DeLancy, which is being “aged”, will be circulated, not only to the media and all UK police forces, but to all European forces via Europol and, more broadly, worldwide, through Interpol. Given that he’d now be ninety, he may well be dead, anyway, but obviously, it’s not a route we can ignore. We do also have a reported sighting of him in the mid-1990s. As it was by someone who knew him in his previous life, we’re obviously treating it seriously, though we’re not holding out any great hope that it will come to anything. That’s it, from me, Guv,’ he ended, closing his file and turning to Calderwood.
‘Thanks, Colin,’ said Calderwood, stepping forward to continue the briefing and opening his own file. ‘At this stage we’re clueless, if the image encased in the plastic sheathing is Ariana, as to why she was placed inside it and then put centre-stage and, we think, then bathed in light. The same question can be ask
ed of the male body, regardless of who it is, i.e. why was it placed in the box, restrained with ropes and a gag and seems to have been, very specifically, put facing the stage and the illuminated figure. Because of the restraints, we can assume, again, in the very short term, that whoever it is, was alive when they were tied up; whether he was killed subsequently or left to die is, as yet, uncertain.’ He paused as everyone seemed to shudder, hardened professionals, though they all were.
‘Also, at this stage, we can’t assume that, if the figure is Ariana herself, she was actually dead when she was placed inside the sheath,’ he added, pausing again as a second shiver rippled through the room. ‘An obvious and associated question, and the sixth aspect, is how, technically, it was done,’ he continued. ‘Experts have already confirmed our own view, that she isn’t in an air-pocket but, like a fly in amber, is totally immersed in the actual substance which surrounds her. The complexity and precision required to produce such a perfect end result, despite the, presumably hot, plastic, if plastic it is, touching the body, must have taken an extraordinarily high level of expertise. Also, bearing in mind the obvious importance attached to the image, it’s unlikely such a result was achieved by chance. I think we can assume, therefore, that one or more “practice runs” must have taken place. As the theatre shows no signs of this, we face the thankless task of trying to find out, not only who possessed the necessary skills to do such work, but also where such ‘dry runs’ actually occurred.
‘Yes, Cerian?’ he paused, seeing her raised hand.
‘I’m just wondering, sir, why, with all the care apparently taken to place both the figure of Ariana so that it could be “seen”, and the body, so that it could “see” – why were both sets of curtains drawn?’
Calderwood nodded appreciatively. ‘A good point and it’s the seventh aspect of the case. It is a pretty major anomaly. It would seem to defeat the whole object of the body’s, or bodies’, positioning. We’ve no answer, yet, but I suspect when we get one, we will be near to solving the whole case.’
Death of a Dancer Page 10
