by Peter Helton
The constable cleared his throat, then asked, ‘Do you have information regarding the recent fire here?’
The recent fire? How many had there been? ‘Any idea who might be responsible, yet?’ I carried on.
‘May I ask who you are, sir?’ he asked sternly.
‘By all means,’ I said kindly and walked off towards my car. So many unanswered questions. It would have been pointless burdening the constable with my worries; I would go and find Needham and tell him personally.
Detective Superintendent Michael Needham was not a great fan of private detectives in general or of my personal style in particular, but he gave credit where it was due and he had in the past grudgingly admitted that a few of my wild stabs in the dark had skewered the odd culprit that had managed to slip through his own podgy fingers.
The car park at Manvers Street police station was full of police vehicles, but I just found enough room to squeeze the Jazz into a corner. Needham’s car was in its reserved space. Over the years I had become familiar with the police station, inside and out. It was a cuboid 1960s carbuncle that urgently needed to be demolished, but, of course, there was no money for that so they just kept renovating it on the inside instead. The lobby had recently been tarted up too, and the lobby was as far as I got. Sergeant Hayes, the desk sergeant this afternoon, was also not one of Aqua Investigations’ greatest admirers, although less fierce than the superintendent. ‘If you want to make a statement, I’ll get a constable to come down.’
‘I want to talk to Needham.’
‘Well, you can’t; he’s left.’
‘His car’s outside.’
‘Oh, is it?’ He grunted and reluctantly picked up the phone. When he eventually got an answer, he told Needham I was there in the same tone he might use when reporting a blocked toilet. After a lot of uh-huhs he hung up. ‘DSI Needham will be down in a few minutes.’
I concluded that if Needham refused to see me in his office, my popularity had to be at an all-time low. He kept me waiting for half an hour before squeezing into the lobby through a side door. Needham could have lost three stone and you might not even have noticed it, apart from the irritability that came from his sugar cravings and restricted beer intake. He was carrying a lot of spare weight round the middle, a briefcase in one hand and the jacket of his suit over the other arm.
He nodded curtly as he walked past me to the entrance. ‘Do something useful, Honeysett; get the door for me, will you?’
I did. ‘Where are we going?’
‘We are not going anywhere. You wanted to talk to me?’ He made straight for his car.
‘If you have a minute.’
He stopped to consult his watch. ‘You’ve literally got about two minutes.’
I told him about seeing Joshua Grant at the pub and about Verity disappearing. Needham pursed his lips and silently mulled it over for ten seconds. ‘Just because she stopped turning up for her modelling job doesn’t mean there’s a connection. What’s her surname?’
‘I think it’s Lake.’
Needham gave me an irate look. ‘You think? You employ people and don’t know where they live and you’re not sure what they’re called?’
‘It’s all pretty informal, Mike.’ Needham had once, after one-too-many beers, offered first name terms and probably regretted it at leisure; he hadn’t used my first name since.
‘What you mean is that no one pays any bloody tax. OK, I’ll let DI Reid know about the girl …’
‘Verity.’
‘Verity, possibly Lake. OK, if you have any more information, tell Reid.’
‘Reid? But Reid hates me.’
‘That’s true, Honeysett, he does. You made him look like an idiot.’
‘He doesn’t need much help.’
‘I don’t have time to discuss DI Reid with you.’
‘But why make me talk to him?’
‘Because he’s in charge. I’ll be away for a couple of weeks.’ He moved off towards his car, blipped his remote and the boot opened by itself. He added his briefcase to a grey suitcase and closed the lid.
‘Going anywhere nice?’
‘Hendon Police College, two-week course.’
‘I didn’t think they could still teach you stuff – not at your age.’
‘Very little. I’m teaching the course, you nitwit.’ He got behind the wheel. ‘Leave the matter to DI Reid. By all means look for your girl, but don’t stray into Reid’s investigation – you don’t want to give him a reason to make your life difficult. And whatever you do find out, keep him informed.’ He drove off, blaring his horn at a couple of boys who were too busy staring at their mobile phones to see him come flying out of the station car park. Needham knew that I wouldn’t give DI Reid the time of day, so there had been no need for me to point it out to him. I could just imagine what Reid would make of my suspicions. Had I told him that Christine Rainer, who had claimed to be Verity’s aunt, had forgotten she lived in Belgium, he’d say that she must have moved. If I told him the two weren’t speaking, he would say the two must have kissed and made up. And he’d have simply shrugged if I had told him that the Montblanc ballpoint pen that poor hard-up auntie wrote down her name with was worth more than her car. I knew that because I had once liked the look of one in a shop window and nearly fainted at the price tag. Of course, Auntie Christine could have found the biro somewhere and had no idea what it was worth, but to me she had given off a faint aroma of money that I had first noticed the moment she said that she could not afford to lend Verity any. She could have recently fallen on hard times, said my inner Annis Jordan critic, but I was willing to bet that she had borrowed the Polo from her daily.
FOUR
The only picture I had of Henry Blinkhorn was the slightly out-of-focus specimen provided by Griffins. I called Haarbottle in his office.
‘That’s the only picture we have of him,’ he said. ‘We don’t keep an album of dead people here.’ He sighed in my ear. ‘You haven’t made any progress, then,’ he added in an unsurprised voice.
‘These things take time,’ I said soothingly.
‘Don’t I know it. But there’s no point in proving that fraud has been committed if all the ill-gained money has been blown in a casino somewhere. I don’t care about justice, Honeysett; I want the million and a half back.’
‘How big would your own bonus be?’
‘Let’s just say I won’t go hungry in my old age. You are keeping an eye on his wife?’
‘I’m staring at her house as we speak,’ I said and quietly eased another piece of bread into the toaster.
‘Remind me how much we are paying you for that.’
‘Not enough.’ Whenever there is the promise of a percentage of the recovered money, the insurance company pays reduced rates – just enough to keep you alive while you do all the hard work. If you draw a blank, then you have worked for very little reward. ‘I have actually made contact with Janette Blinkhorn. Undercover, of course. Well, under an umbrella, to be precise.’
‘Are you sure she didn’t see through you?’
‘Absolutely. She invited me in and made me a cuppa.’
‘They are crafty people, the Blinkhorns. There’s a lot of money at stake. And a lengthy prison term for them if you expose them. I’m not sure I’d eat or drink anything that woman offered me.’ He had a point and my stomach contracted when I remembered how willingly I had drunk Janette Blinkhorn’s coffee. Just then the toaster noisily chucked out my toast. ‘What was that?’
‘Glove box keeps popping open. The catch is broken.’
‘Perhaps, if the payout comes through, you should invest in a twenty-first-century car. Or perhaps a quieter toaster. Get to work, Honeysett.’
I called the Bath Chronicle. That way I could work and butter toast at the same time. The Chronicle had run the story when Blinkhorn first went missing, presumed dead. Surely they had a picture of him?
‘Must have had,’ said the sub-editor. He sounded about sixteen. ‘But that was absolut
ely ages ago, wasn’t it?’
‘It was six years ago,’ I protested.
‘Exactly.’
‘But don’t you keep an archive of articles?’
‘Yeah, yeah, sure. We digitized a lot of stuff.’
‘And?’
‘It was before my time, but apparently they got some kids over – school kids, you know? Work experience and that. And they made them scan the stuff? And they chucked half of it in the bin instead because they couldn’t be arsed and thought no one would notice.’
‘But you did.’
‘Too late; the bin men had been.’
I gave in and called Annis. ‘I haven’t even started on the murals yet,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Why is your voice echoing? You’re not on the loo, are you?’
‘I’m in the pool house. It’s tropical in here. I spend most of my time in my bathing suit.’ It’s all right for some, I thought uncharitably, and especially for Mr Hitchcock. ‘Reuben and I have been going over my colour sketches but I’m not quite there yet. Honestly, this pool is huge. Not quite Olympic, but, yeah, huge. The wall he wants me to paint on is massive. Everything here is huge. Except Reuben – he’s tiny. And practically bald. How did your baking go?’
‘The baking was OK; it was the modelling that got to me.’
‘Modelling?’
‘Verity didn’t turn up for the last two life-draining sessions.’
‘Draining?’
‘Well, it was.’ I told Annis the whole story while she sat in tropical silence. I had half hoped to hear reassuring noises from her, alleviating my suspicions, but what I did hear at the end of it was the slurping noise of a straw sucking up the dregs of her drink.
‘Sorry, finished another passion fruit drink. There’s a button here, and if you press it, five minutes later Reuben’s manservant arrives and asks what he can do for you. He is not so tiny. Works out, too. In the gym. Next to the pool house.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘I think you’re right to worry about Verity. I tried more than once to sound her out about her background and what else was going on in her life, but she simply ignored it or shrugged it off with some funny remark. It was as though only the present mattered to her. Or perhaps the future. And she did call her aunt an ugly old bat. The aunt was not old-battish, then?’
‘No. Extremely well groomed, attractive. Positively un-old-battish and I think she was dressing down for the occasion.’
‘What did Needham say?’
‘The usual. Keep your nose out, but if you should uncover anything anyway, come and tell us so we can claim all the glory, standing in front of the BBC news cameras.’
‘He said all that? Golly. And did he pat you down for your revolver again while he said it?’
I own a strictly illegal WWII army revolver, a Webley .38, which Needham has been trying to take off me for years. It had belonged to a long-dead uncle and came with the house when I inherited it. ‘He hasn’t mentioned the Webley for ages. And he may not have said all that in so many words, but that’s what Needham means. And what’s more, he’s swanned off to give some lectures, leaving DI Reid in charge.’
‘Reid is seriously unpleasant; I’d stay clear of him.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘I liked Verity. She might be in trouble. Go and find her.’
‘I’ll try. Does Reuben really have a butler?’
‘I don’t think you’d call him a butler. But he does say “You rang, madam”. He’s a sort of factotum – does all sorts for Reuben.’
‘Nice for Reuben.’
While Annis no doubt pressed the factotum-buzzer for another long drink, I stood in my less well-served attic office and studied the Ordnance Survey maps of Somerset and Wiltshire that were fading on the walls. Just for the heck of it, I stuck a coloured drawing pin into Bearwood Hall, where Annis was feeling tropical, and another where I was standing at the bottom of a damp valley. It must be nice to have a house so big that it’s marked on maps; you can always find your way home.
Henry Blinkhorn liked to spend his time fishing. His wife lived where they had always lived, which must mean that he had at least one or two favourite fishing haunts nearby. I knew that theoretically they could pack up and slip out of the country any minute now, but I didn’t think so. The Chestnuts, I had felt when Janette gave me shelter from the rain, had a solid, permanent feel to it. If next time I went there it stood lifeless with a ‘For Sale’ sign at the gate, I’d be very surprised (and eggy of face), but taking a punt on the two staying put and staying in touch with each other – or once more getting in touch now that the dosh had been doled out – Henry would be fishing as long as the weather was good, preferably with brand-new snazzy fishing gear bought with the new money. There were plenty of small lakes and trout farms, rivers and canals to dip your rod into in our county alone, all less than an hour’s drive from The Chestnuts. I stuck a mackerel-blue drawing pin into the map to mark the Blinkhorns’ house and went fishing.
Not really. While I am quite partial to fish in my kitchen, I do not see the point in spending four hours angling for something that takes five minutes to eat. I drove to all the obvious places and showed the magazine cutting to the people who ran fisheries, telling them an unconvincing story about having lost contact with the guy. I couldn’t pretend to be an angler for five minutes, knowing nothing about it. I stood about with my binoculars on river banks and canal towpaths, pretending instead to be a birdwatcher while scrutinizing the faces of the anglers and comparing them with my fuzzy photo. Anglers were an odd lot, I concluded. If this was about getting your hands on some fish, I could think of quicker and possibly cheaper ways. And all that gear must cost a fortune. Yet it seemed popular; I was obviously missing the point. And the chances of me catching him this way were extremely slim. I couldn’t visit all the rivers, lakes, ponds and canals even just in Somerset. While I was here, he would be fishing elsewhere; while I was there, angling over here. Henry Blinkhorn could be anywhere, happily dipping his tackle into the waters, his face covered in a luxurious growth of beard, unrecognizable except to his wife. Or even to his wife. Perhaps Haarbottle was wrong after all and he had really been sleeping with the fishes these past six years. The possibility of landing a fat cheque from Griffins retreated further the more I thought about it, which meant I was in a grumpy sort of mood when I got home. Then I remembered the rabbit and immediately cheered up again. I tipped rabbit and marinade into a casserole dish, added a good squeeze of tomato paste, topped it up with stock and shoved it in the oven. Soon the house filled with the aroma of cooking, and after sixty torturous minutes I checked on the progress, stirred in handfuls of button mushrooms and cooked it for another hour. The meat was achingly tender, and the aromatic sauce beautifully dressed a mountain of tagliatelle. It was a much happier private eye who left the invisible Jazz standing in the yard and drove his classic Citroën into town.
It was live music night at the Bell. The music hadn’t started yet but the HE 109s had set up already; among amps and speakers in a snake-pit of cables on the tiny stage stood drum kit, bass guitar, a keyboard and the largest saxophone I had ever seen. The band were sitting at the bar, easily recognizable by their matching gothic-revival clothing, piercings, messy make-up, multicoloured hair and swastika tattoos. I procured a pint of Guinness and found a seat, sharing a tiny table with a couple of blokes who were sitting with their backs to the stage and were here strictly for the beer. The piped music was loud enough for their conversation to be almost inaudible as I sat back on the bench that ran along the wall. I wasn’t here for the music either. This is where I had last seen Verity; that the Bell was her favourite pub in town was the only thing I knew about her for certain, since she had told me so several times and had asked to be driven here if it rained a lot. I had no photograph to show the bar staff. There was a nude charcoal drawing of her that one of the students had left behind, but it was not a good likeness and would have been awkward to unroll in the pub.
I nodded at a f
ew acquaintances – it had been a while since I had come here regularly – and settled in for a waiting game. I’m fond of pubs, but when you have to nurse a single pint all night because you are driving, they lose some of their charm. The band had just moved on to the stage and were picking up their instruments when I spotted Pink Hair at the back of the pub near the toilets. The pub was filling up fast, which meant I could only catch intermittent glimpses of her, but I thought it was definitely the girl Verity had greeted so exuberantly the last time I saw her through the pub window. I told the blokes on my table to look after my seat for me and went over.
Pink Hair was about Verity’s age, with a nose ring and blonde eyebrows, and was wearing a fluffy blue top and rainbow nail varnish. It shouldn’t have done but it somehow worked for her. She was sharing a table with three people, one of whom was a girl with swastika earrings who dressed completely in darks, had dark hair and dark eye make-up and gave me a dark look as I appeared at their table. The two blokes sitting opposite the girls with their backs to the wall were both mid-twenties, hard of face and stare, and had just drained pints of industrial cider.
I gave the table an all-purpose smile. Just as I took breath to speak, the band decided to start up with an ear-splitting blast. I took an extra breath and shouted over it. ‘Hi, I’m looking for a girl called Verity?’
The blokes shook their heads, the dark-haired girl studied her rum and coke, and Pink looked from me to the blokes and back again and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Don’t know any Verity,’ called one of the blokes at the same time as Pink said, ‘Don’t know where she is.’
