Frank sipped the gin. He said thoughtfully, ‘No, I didn’t. In point of fact, I was feeling bloody awful. It was cold in the flat. I was cold. I didn’t fancy anything,’ he said.
Steve let a silence settle.
‘What kind of wall did you lean on?’ he said at last.
‘The coping. Fantastic view. Nocturne by Whistler.’
‘And you just watched a while and then left her.’
‘Yes. Well, hang on. She’d already gone.’
‘Where?’
‘Back the way we came. I think. I don’t know. I mean, I was shivering. I was awful, Steve.’
Steve considered a moment. ‘Frank,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you were on the embankment. I think you walked down Lots Road to a wharf. That wall you leaned on was at a wharf. You watched the lights from there.’
‘Do you think so, Steve?’ Frank said uncertainly.
‘I do. If you think hard, you’ll remember.’
‘Wharves,’ Frank said. ‘Atmospheric, aren’t they?’
‘Very. Nocturne-ish. Lighrs across the water.’
‘Yes. Traffic was passing though, Steve,’ Frank said unhappily.
‘Where?’
‘In the road just behind us. I don’t think it was a wharf. I mean, we could invent one.’
‘Are you sure about the traffic?’
‘Positive. I’m sure it wasn’t a wharf, Steve.’
‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ Steve said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was killed on a wharf. The police think it was Cremorne Wharf, the farthest from where you were. She was tangled up in some stuff from there. I don’t think you killed her, Frank.’
‘Well, thanks very much,’ Frank said. He was looking at him with dislike.
‘We had to know. You’re still on the hook, Frank.’
‘Well, I’ll have another drink,’ Frank said.
‘No you won’t. How did you get home?’
‘I caught a cab. On the corner of Beaufort Street, opposite.’
‘Would the driver remember you?’
‘Well, how would I know that?’
‘Did anyone see you when you got in?’
‘Did they? I don’t know. Yes, they did. That yellow phantom on the ground floor was in the lavatory. She’d omitted to lock the door. I tried to get in. Some hurly-burly took place with the door. She flashed her fangs at me, from the throne.’
‘Oh, well, that’s beautiful. Well, it’s worth it, Frank.’
‘Worth what?’ Frank said.
‘It’s a risk. They haven’t got anyone yet. Still, that’s what we do. You’re volunteering in the morning, Frank. To the police.’
‘What are you talking about? Don’t be so absurd,’ Frank said, with fright.
‘Look, you can’t stay here. You haven’t been at school, or the language place, or the library. You’re not at home. Why aren’t you at home, incidentally? What do you mean it was cold in the flat?’
‘The heating is off. That old phantom is making them change the boiler. She’s frightened of fire,’ Frank said sulkily.
‘Oh, well, fantastic. Frank, you didn’t have any fix. What you had was a cold. You were really lousy. You told Germaine that when you were at the river, and she advised you to go home. So you jumped in a cab – police find cab-driver. And went home – interview with old throne person. In the morning you feel so lousy, though, you ask if I’ll let you use my fine heated pad. Well, of course I will. Escort you back to it, put you to bed, you’re looking so terrible. You haven’t heard about old Germaine. When I tell you tonight, you being so improved, your first thought is to go and tell the police what you know. Fault that!’ Steve said.
Frank faulted it right away.
‘What are you talking about? I never heard such absurdity. Why should I go and give myself up? You know what the police are like!’
‘You aren’t giving yourself up. You’re eliminating yourself. In effect three of you are reporting there in the morning – you, the cab-driver and the lady in the loo.’
‘Oh, yes. Great effect. What if they don’t remember?’
‘It’s a risk,’ Steve admitted.
8
‘WHAT’s up with you? Bark!’ Georges said in French.
Ah, bark yourself, Artie silently told him. But he barked. ‘Encore une bouteille de St Julien ’70!’ They were supposed to yell out the wine orders. It made the place sound busy. It was busy, anyway. He’d been run off his feet since he’d gobbled the meal.
They always had the meal together: the patron Georges; the two other waiters, the chef, the under-chef, the washer-up. From the moment he’d finished his coffee he’d been jumping around.
Up and down the stairs from the store-room below, to the bar, to the kitchen, to the main diner, the two side diners. Set the dishes of crudités. Cut up the bread, prepare the biscuits, the cheeses, butter pots, sugar bowls, cruets, mustard.
Then the early guests had started drifting in; candles lit; before he could sort out the fruit bowls.
Non-stop since then.
It was a good small restaurant, French provincial cuisine.
He was an attraction with his Afro and his good French. He was the only one with regular English, anyway.
He didn’t mind it. The money was okay for the nights he worked. He could eat there when he wanted. It was suitable in so many ways. But tonight he was in a black rage.
‘Bonsoir, madame, m’sieur. Etes-vous prêts à commander?’
‘I think we’ll lay into a steak unless you recommend –’
English.
‘Well, the Canard à la Rouennaise is really a dream. The chef has excelled himself.’
‘Oh, perhaps in that case –’
‘Le St Julien, ’70!’ Serge barked, bustling up with it.
‘Pour la table de quatre, là-bas,’ Artie directed him. There was no sommelier, and Georges mainly did it, but when Georges casually sat down and chatted with the regulars, as he now had, Serge got it. That was the way the atmosphere was subtly maintained; waiters running and barking, Georges genially relaxed.
Artie heard his own tongue glibly running, and brooded.
Steve was keeping something back. Some large unsuspected part was being kept back. He tried to control himself, but it was hard.
He wrote the order and took the menus and hustled through to the kitchen. Albert, gaunt, butcher-aproned, was limping about there, working silently and systematically with his cleaver. There was no confusion in the small kitchen. The under-chef worked swiftly with the sauces and with the desserts. The washer-up kept washing up.
Artie gave in the order, and took out two purées de marrons Mont Blanc that the under-chef had ready for him, and served them.
‘Ensuite, servez-vous, s’il vous plaît, du café.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’ And with a single cognac. He knew this pair. Which meant a trot down to the bar for a new bottle.
‘Un cognac pour moi – et pour toi aussi, chérie?’
‘Non, seulement du café. M’m, quelle merveille cette Crème Chantilly!’
‘Thank you, madame. I knew you’d like it,’ Artie said, in English. They liked that; the two languages coming out of the big Afro. They’d joke about it. ‘Une fine, monsieur – ça arrive.’
He sorted out their dinner mints, for the coffee, on his way down to the bar. On his way up, he left the cognac on the banquette and went into the kitchen to see how the canard was doing.
The under-chef was pouring the sauce over the rich stuffed duck, and he waited, and took it, and dodged Marc on his way out.
It went on like this, and he went on brooding.
No, he’d keep things under control now. There was a pattern, and he’d put everything into it; twenty-four hours a day. He’d invested his whole life in their joint conception. He had suppressed too many things – his own directorial ambitions, his poetry – to blow it now. He couldn’t do more than he was doing. He had kept nothing back.
Steve was keeping something back. He felt betrayed.
By one o’clock, still on the trot, he felt his head spinning with the cigar smoke and laughter and the smell of food.
The late diners kept at it, coffee and coffee, and one more liqueur and another. He saw Albert jerking his chin at him at the head of the basement stairs, and followed him down, Albert hop-hopping in front of him.
The chef had taken off his butcher-apron and was in his shabby grey jacket. He had his bit of paper with the food order. They gave in the food orders every night on the suppliers’ Ansafones. Artie copied the list into English: poultry and meat, fish, dairy stuff, boulangerie, pâtisserie, fruit and vegetables.
‘Relis-le-moi en français,’ Albert said when he’d finished.
Artie read it back.
‘C’est ça. Okay,’ Albert said, and poured himself a cognac at the bar while Artie used the phone there. Tonight, as always, Albert seemed to think he was actually talking to somebody at the other end.
‘Tell him his broccoli was solid shit.’
‘Okay,’ Artie said.
‘If that’s his broccoli, he can send cabbage.’
Artie told the Ansafone about the broccoli, and Albert took off without a good night.
The staff taxi turned up at half-past one and waited while the restaurant emptied and they did the preliminary clearing.
Through it all, Artie burned with a sense of betrayal.
Okay, he thought, he wouldn’t destroy everything because one part was rotten. He would continue, with the help of the crazy Arab or without him; with Steve or without him. Steve had to be used in the way of everything else.
‘Okay, merci les gars, bonne nuit,’ Georges said.
‘Bonne nuit,’ they said.
‘A demain.’
‘A demain.’
Tomorrow was Friday when Artie worked again. He worked in the restaurant on Saturday, too. But Sunday was his.
9
‘TEDDY, it’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you go out there for an hour or two, it will do you good, lift up your spirits,’ Mrs Warton said.
She said it without much conviction. From the sullen look on his face something like an exorcist would be needed to get anything going with him in the spirit-raising line. He had all the Sunday papers round him on the bed.
She’d known it wasn’t going to be easy when she’d opened the front door, first thing. The sun had glinted into the porch and on to the fat wad of papers lying there. It had glinted on a section of Ted’s nose which disappeared over the fold of the top one. The headline bore the word Chelsea. A quick flip revealed the same word in all the headlines.
‘Have they come yet?’ he had bawled from upstairs.
‘Yes, dear, bringing them right up.’
Oh, dear. Ted would be upset, she had thought. And Ted was.
‘Don’t bother having a shave,’ she coaxed him now. Shaving was dangerous. He thought while shaving. ‘Just jump into your togs and get me a few sprouts, and something for the vases. My word, the air is like wine, do you a world of good.’
Without a word, with something more in the nature of a hawk or belch, Warton swept the papers on the floor and thrust a foot out of bed.
He had quite a decent morning in the garden, however; got the old runner beans down and on the compost heap, poles stacked in the shed. There was a bit of slug about; all the damp weather. He’d do for them next week. Wallflowers getting a bit stalky in the boxes; should be planted out, really. No time before lunch.
He became aware something hadn’t happened. Rose hadn’t come out to ask him if he wanted to slip up the road for one before lunch. Well, he didn’t. Catch him showing his face in there today. She was thoughtful, Rose.
His heart lurched again, all the same.
Need a bloody miracle to save him now.
Oh yes, it was all happening, artists ‘studies of Germaine in the altogether. Reporters buzzing round that art school like blue-arsed flies. His own little outburst when he’d told them to stop hounding him and to go to the Information Room at the Yard. (‘Take the pressure off you, Ted,’ the C.C. had said. Warton had been going to ask to be relieved of Press conferences, but it had thrown him into a stupor. Why had it been suggested to him first?)
And the little hints and nudges in the papers; three apparently motiveless murders in a fortnight within a mile of each other. They’d used different words for the same menacing suggestion … ‘Inquiries being made at mental institutions for inmates who …’
Oh yes, oh yes.
‘Lunch, dear.’
Thoughtful, Rose.
The kids weren’t here this week-end.
Very thoughtful.
Why was she being so thoughtful? Why everybody so thoughtful? Take the pressure off. Nice relaxing week-end. Needed relaxing, did he?
Warton snouted through his roast beef and sprouts and Yorkshire pud.
Didn’t give any hint, though. Not his way. Ng. Ur.
*
He didn’t do much really, just waited for tomorrow’s papers. Put another hour in, in the garden, but no heart for it. He sat sullenly watching the box all evening, and went to bed early.
He slept badly and woke to catch only the tail end of the radio news. Earthquake, had the chap said?
He shot down to pick up the papers himself.
Earthquake. South America. Huge devastation.
Well, well.
He had a bath and a shave and watched himself carefully in the mirror.
Not a bad moment to feed them the pregnancy. Drop it in and let them figure it out; in and around earthquake specials. Showed a line being pursued. Useful. Right moment.
‘Shocking news, Teddy,’ Rose said, shovelling him his eggs.
‘Terrible. Quite a few thousand dead, I see.’
Yes, and a nice wave of typhus, if he knew anything about it. Hundreds of thousands homeless. Special appeals, Red Cross, Pope, blankets. Keep them all busy.
‘Those poor souls.’
‘Shocking.’ He went out to the car with something like spring in his heel. Weather holding up. Very promising day.
‘Right. Everybody here?’ he said in his office when the team had assembled.
‘All in, sir. Shut the door, last man,’ Summers said.
‘I just want to say that now we no longer have to worry about Press briefings, I intend instituting fuller conferences between ourselves. I see one or two new faces today,’ he said, looking round at the thirty-odd detectives. ‘Soon get the routine next door. Don’t want to go into it now.’ Next door was the Incident Room, where a most formidable routine had been established; by him.
‘Just one word, subject of the Press, before we leave it. Very useful organ, the Press. Operative word, useful. To us. Don’t want it vice versa. Our duty, pursue our investigations thoroughly, without deflection. However, deflection sometimes unavoidable.
‘What we have here, three unconnected murders. Press wants a connection. No lead turns up, they dream one. Doing it now – you’ll have seen. Round-up of nut-houses, likely nutters on parole. Very irresponsible. So – deflection needed.
‘This morning, Information Room at the Yard will be putting out a piece of evidence we’d sooner have kept. Germaine Roberts was in the tenth week of pregnancy. Forensically very important. However, give a dog a bone. Lesser of two evils.
‘Next point. Most important, investigation of this kind, keep an open mind. Press is working up to a maniac. All right, maybe there is one. Can’t rule it out. Am therefore instituting from today what I call the Crazy Ideas department. Note the word. Not unorthodox. Crazy. Don’t want anybody to think he’s a fool. Any man with an idea – bring it to Chief Inspector Summers, or to me. Won’t laugh. Assure you of that. Contrary. Those who know me know I’m not a big laugher.’
He heard quiet appreciation of that one round the room. No harm in dropping in a comical touch from time to time. Didn’t look up or acknowledge it in any way. Not a bloody come
dian.
He listened expressionlessly as Summers read out the Cumulative. The landlord Logan had been ruled out; timing didn’t allow his involvement on a wharf. Dr Frank Colbert-Greer had been interrogated and his story checked. Investigations were proceeding with a gay club, Shaft, adjacent to Cremorne Wharf; Germaine Roberts had been a member.
‘Right,’ Summers said, winding up. ‘All those whose assignments aren’t ready, go to the waiting room or hop down to the canteen. There’s too much hullabaloo in that Incident Room. Caught me on the hop a bit, this briefing, sir,’ he apologized to Wart on.
‘Ng,’ Warton said in absolution. Not a big brain, Summers. Could organize, though. ‘How was it?’ he said, when they’d all shuffled out.
‘Put heart into them, sir.’ Summers filled his pipe, nodding sincerely. ‘Esprit de corps,’ he said over the flame of his match.
‘Ng,’ Warton said, pleased. ‘Which one Mason?’
Summers had mentioned the young detective he considered promising.
‘Tall lad, cleft chin, longish hair.’
‘Long hair, eh?’
‘Protective colouring. Ambitious lad,’ said Summers.
*
The ambitious lad had tabbed follow-ups in By water Street; known as ‘sit-downs’. He had no objection. He did his work, noted those needing still further inquiry, and was through before one.
He had a pint and a sandwich at the Markham Arms, and took a small trundle along nearby Jubilee Place, scene of Miss Manningham-Worsley’s exit.
Very weird, the murders so close together.
He thought he’d have a look at the area of the third, down by the river.
The King’s Road was busy at lunch-time, a coppery sun glinting. He bought a paper; front page full of the earthquake. Big scratchy wire photo of a woman in a bowler hat crying with a child in her arms. Relief supplies being sent, message from the Pope, blankets. A little teaser at the foot of the page said Chelsea Model was Pregnant, page 5.
Page 5, eh? Not bad thinking, Ng, he thought.
He picked his way across tie road and went down Flood Street. Plumply prosperous houses, done up to the knocker. There was a copper outside Mrs Thatcher’s, but nothing special in that: important politician.
The Chelsea Murders Page 5
