‘Not for weeks. He rang me some time in September – my secretary could find the date for you. Everything is logged. Asking if I had anything. He didn’t sound too bothered about it, though. That’s when I told him to come back when he was hungry enough. Last time I got him an audition he didn’t bother to turn up. That makes me look bad. So I wasn’t going to put him up for anything without a change in his attitude. And there was no sign of that.’
‘Do you know what he’s living on?’
She shook her head. ‘Bar work, maybe. Or his parents might be giving him money – that could be the problem, of course. They’ve got plenty – and Geraldine’s a doting mother. But she ought to know, if anyone does, that you have to push yourself to get on. You can’t buy your way into this business.’
Slider had one last question. ‘Do you know Gilda Steenkamp?’
She frowned. ‘The novelist? Never met her. I’m not a literary agent.’
‘You’ve heard of her?’
‘Of course. The Ridley novels. Bitter Mountain and Blood River. Benny Macrillo made the TV serials, and there’s talk of a third. Savage Rock, is that the title? Benedict Cumberbatch was asked for Ridley – did you know that? – but he couldn’t fit it in with other commitments, that’s why they got Sam Wroughton instead. His big break. Made a good fist of it, I thought. Darcy Raymond agents him. I got one of my boys, Sedley Parkes, lines in Blood River. Benny’s a sweetheart. Never forgets an old friend. Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ Slider said. ‘Just making random connections in my mind.’
‘Bafta-winning producer/director Benvenuto Macrillo, and she calls him Benny,’ Atherton marvelled. ‘I love that. OK, I know they all do it – calling Madonna “Madge” and so on – but in her case I get the feeling it’s genuine. He really is an old friend.’
‘Shush!’ said Swilley. ‘I’m trying to watch.’
They had found the appropriate episode of Lockhart archived on line, and were watching it on Hart’s monitor.
‘Then presumably you believe her when she says she doesn’t know Gilda Steenkamp?’ Slider said.
‘Why would she lie?’ said Atherton. ‘We didn’t expect her to. We only wanted to know about the Greyling/Lingoss connection.’
‘But as a bonus we’ve now got a Greyling/Steenkamp’s-husband’s-shop connection,’ said Hart. ‘For what that’s worth.’
‘He might have met her during the filming,’ said Atherton. ‘If she dropped by to watch – who wouldn’t?’
‘Will you shush!’ said Swilley.
‘It’s hokey,’ Atherton said. ‘Run it on.’
Hart ran it on. ‘There’s the shop!’ several people exclaimed. They watched the scene in real time. It didn’t mean anything to anyone out of context, but all eyes were peeled for anyone they knew. But neither Seagram nor Lucy Gallo was in the shop, which was presumably manned by actors for the shot; Greyling was merely in the background, a browsing shopper who looked alarmed and hurried out when Lockhart and the shop’s proprietor started arguing.
‘Well,’ said Atherton, ‘I’m impressed. I’ve never seen a better nervous glance.’
‘Don’t be so snarky,’ Swilley rebuked him automatically. ‘What are you – Laurence Olivier?’
‘What now, boss?’ Hart asked, ignoring them. ‘Everything seems interconnected, except nothing is.’
‘Chaos is just a pattern you don’t recognize,’ Atherton said.
‘Who said that?’ Hart demanded.
‘Einstein,’ said Atherton. ‘Or it could be Alan Turing.’
‘One should never mistake pattern for meaning,’ said Gascoyne. ‘Iain Banks.’
‘Bollocks. Gordon Ramsay,’ said Fathom.
‘But the only evidence is against Steenkamp,’ said McLaren impatiently, tipping the last Maltesers out of a fun bag into his mouth. ‘We know about her. I dunno why we’re watching this crap.’
‘Because she rang Greyling, genius,’ Hart said. ‘He’s gotta be involved somehow.’
Slider shook his head. ‘Something doesn’t feel right. We’re missing something.’
Hart gave his mighty cogitations a respectful silence of a full 1.4 seconds, then asked, ‘So what are we going to do next?’
‘Go and talk to Leon Greyling,’ Slider said.
Adam and Eve Mews was a narrow, cobbled turning off Kensington High Street, but like other London mews hadn’t seen a horse in seventy years. In the fifties and early sixties they’d been inconvenient and rackety semi-slums, but when the tidal wave of Fashion crashed over the capital at the end of the sixties, it had suddenly become cute and funky to live in a converted hayloft above a stable. Girls in knee-length white plastic boots and Biba dresses could be seen tripping (sometimes literally, on the cobbles) from their gaily-painted front doors; red, white and blue Minis could be found parked outside, between tubs of geraniums; and film-makers invested mews-dwelling with the aspirational glamour of swinging parties and Michael Caine draped with multiple starfish-eyed dollies.
It had all calmed down now, and with the rise in property prices – combined with the fact that mews were always located in highly desirable areas – nobody could afford to be funky in them. Now they were very expensive homes for the privileged few.
‘And the adorable name can’t hurt,’ Atherton remarked as they turned in.
‘There was a pub called the Adam and Eve on the corner,’ Slider told him. ‘It closed in 1973. Paxman says it was a bit grim. Mind you, most places were in 1973.’
‘Still, it makes for a cute address.’
‘They’re all bijou residences now,’ Slider remarked. ‘You can tell from the pristine paintwork. And the burglar alarms.’
‘As McLaren said, you’d think there’d be more security cameras.’ He braked. ‘This is it.’
With the rise in property values, the early simple conversions of the sixties and seventies had been swept away, and little remained of the original structures but the façades, which were protected features. Behind them lurked modern-built luxury urban cottages with every convenience electronics could provide.
‘How the hell does a resting actor afford to live here?’ Atherton said, stepping back after ringing the doorbell to stare up at the perfectly-laundered brick and exquisite paint job. ‘You couldn’t do it on bar work.’
‘Rich father, doting mother?’ said Slider.
Atherton gave a tight smile. ‘Or are you thinking, old guv of mine, that blackmail might provide a suitably large income for a work-shy mama’s boy?’
‘The thought hadn’t begun to cross my mind,’ said Slider. ‘And we don’t know that he’s a work-shy mama’s boy. He might just be nice but dim.’
The door opened. ‘Sorry, I was in the bog.’ A very slender figure, in cashmere joggers and a silk shirt hanging open, was topped by a rumpled shock of blonde hair and a blonde-stubbled face; blue eyes in rather sleep-deprived sockets, and very expensive teeth spread out in a welcoming smile.
‘I think you could be right, guv,’ Atherton murmured. And then, aloud, ‘Leon Greyling? We’re police officers. Could we have a word with you?’
SEVENTEEN
The Stars Look Down, a Bit
The eyes and the smile, interestingly, had been all for Slider. Now he looked at Atherton and the eyes narrowed. ‘What about?’
‘We can’t talk about it here on the doorstep,’ Slider said. ‘May we come in?’
He said ‘may’, but he used a tone that brooked no dissent. Greyling obviously responded to the smack of firm government, because he made big eyes and a pout but stepped back to let them in, saying, ‘Ooh, well, if you’re going to be like that about it …’
Inside, the ground floor area, which had been the stable and coach house, was now an achingly modern kitchen with, even at a quick glance, every contrivance known to twenty-first-century man, and included a dining area and a huge sofa facing a wall-mounted sixty-five-inch TV. The disadvantage to mews-living was the lack of windows on the ground floor, whic
h made it cosy but a touch claustrophobic, so the main sitting room tended to be on the first floor where the hayloft and groom’s living quarters would have been. Straight ahead was an open-tread light oak staircase, from the top of which came the sound of shrill and monotonous barking. But Greyling led them into the kitchen area, leaned himself against the central island counter, folded his arms defensively across his chest, and said, ‘Well, what d’you want?’
Slider could do it standing up as well as the next man. ‘We want to talk to you about Erik Lingoss.’
‘Don’t know him,’ Greyling said promptly.
‘Yes, you do,’ Slider threw back. ‘You were both members of Shapes Gym, and were seen talking together on several occasions.’
‘You talk to a lot of people at a gym. It’s just “hi, how’s it going?” stuff. I don’t know him know him.’
‘You introduced him to your agent, Marjorie Heinz,’ Slider said relentlessly.
He pouted. ‘Oh, if you’ve been talking to Marjie … I just told her he did a good massage, which people at the gym had told me – and by the way, I don’t go there any more. Haven’t been for ages. Anyway, she’s a bit cross with me these days, you don’t want to believe everything she tells you. She said a lot of things to my mother, which weren’t true. Well, hardly any of them. And she won’t get me any work. Just because that beast Jon Sanford said I stood in his light on set. They’re such bitches, all those stars, you’ve no idea. Soon as they get the top billing and their own dressing room they think they’re better than the rest of us. He was nothing before Lockhart. I remember Marjie told me he—’
Slider, well aware that this sort of rattling monologue was a smokescreen, interrupted him. ‘Mr Greyling, I don’t think you realize how serious this is.’
‘Mr Greyling? Well if you’re going to get all humourless about it.’ He shrugged, looking away.
‘Erik Lingoss is dead,’ Slider said. ‘He was murdered. And please don’t pretend you didn’t know.’
At the last moment, Greyling aborted the shocked expression, and said sulkily, ‘It’s all over social media. You’d have to be a monk not to know. Or old. So he’s dead. I’m sorry. He seemed an all-right bloke, but I hardly knew him. What’s it got to do with me?’
‘You know perfectly well what it’s got to do with you,’ Atherton came in sternly. ‘Where were you on the evening of Tuesday the fourth?’
His face shut down. Stony eyes and tight lips. ‘How on earth am I supposed to remember that? That’s over a week ago.’
But Slider, watching him closely, thought there was a flicker of something underneath it. Perhaps not quite alarm, but certainly caution.
‘You will remember,’ Atherton said. ‘Either here, or at the station.’
‘You can’t threaten me,’ Greyling said. ‘I haven’t done anything. Even if I remember, I don’t have to tell you. And I don’t remember.’
‘Let me help you out,’ Slider said kindly. ‘That was the evening Gilda Steenkamp came to see you.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Gilda Steenkamp,’ he said, in a tone that finished the sentence: ‘so there!’.
‘She rang you to say she was on the way,’ Slider said. ‘The telephone call from her number to yours is a matter of record. It’s pointless to deny it.’
‘I don’t know her, and I’m not answering any more of your questions,’ he said, becoming a little shrill. The barking upstairs, which had ceased, started up again. ‘Will you please leave.’
Slider gave him a long look, and said in an avuncular tone, ‘You really would do well to co-operate now, you know. If we have to come back later, you’ll have missed your chance, and things will be a lot stickier for you.’
‘I’m not talking to you,’ Greyling said, but his eyes lingered on Slider’s like those of a schoolboy who wants to oblige, but daren’t peach.
At the door, Atherton said, conversationally, ‘It’s a gorgeous pad you’ve got here. How do you afford it, when you haven’t had any work for ages?’
Greyling had liked the compliment, and almost answered. ‘I’ve got …’ he began, but then shut down again, looking cross. ‘It’s none of your business,’ he said, and folded his lips into a zipped line until both his tormentors were outside, whereupon he snapped the door shut as well.
‘An innocent man,’ Atherton said. ‘Well, I’m convinced, aren’t you?’
‘I hoped he might be,’ Slider said. ‘If we could have eliminated his thread from the tangle … He’s not in the contacts folder on Lingoss’s phone, remember. So he might be telling the truth that he hardly knew him.’
‘You notice he didn’t query when we altered the line of questioning from Lingoss to Steenkamp. He should have said, “What’s that got to do with Erik?” Proving that he knows there’s a link.’
‘But what is it?’ Slider said in frustration. He reflected for a moment. ‘He knows something – and he wants to tell. The question, is how to get it out of him.’
‘But I don’t see him as First Murderer, do you? He struck me as weak and petulant.’
‘I don’t know what part he played,’ Slider said. ‘There’s a kind of little dog who’ll nip round the back and bite while the big dog keeps the victim occupied. If he had a spite against Lingoss, and he could do it without danger to himself …’
‘Hit him while someone else held his arms, you mean?’
‘Except that that’s not what happened. No defence wounds. Lingoss wasn’t restrained in any way. And in any case, what about Gilda Steenkamp?’
‘Yes, what indeed,’ said Atherton. ‘As McLaren said, in a rare access of lucidity, the only evidence we’ve got is against her. And yet …’
‘You don’t want it to be her. Because you admire her writing.’
‘It isn’t that, it’s just that at her level of celebrity – I don’t know, you wouldn’t think she’d even think of it.’
‘You saw the murder scene. I don’t suppose thought came into it much.’
They had reached the car, and Atherton stopped. ‘While we’re here, shall I go and have another talk to Lucy Gallo?’
‘Good idea,’ Slider said. ‘I’ve got to get back to the factory. Can you find your own way back?’
‘Of course.’
‘See if you can firm up the link between Greyling and Steenkamp, via the TV episode.’
‘That was my idea. Everything connects, except that nothing does. “Only connect, and the beast and the monk will die.”’
‘The who and the who?’
‘E.M. Forster. Howards End. The beast was Lingoss, presumably, and he’s dead. The monk is the cool-headed killer who’s hidden himself so far. But when we make the connect, he’ll die too.’
‘No capital punishment any more,’ Slider pointed out.
‘Don’t be so literal,’ Atherton said.
Lucy Gallo was alone in the shop, working at the desk. She buzzed him in, and came halfway to meet him, looking worn and tired.
‘Boss not here?’ Atherton asked cheerfully, to relax her.
‘He’s staying at home with Mrs Steenkamp,’ she said. ‘To keep her spirits up. And protect her from the media.’
‘The media?’
‘Well, they haven’t turned up yet, but they could at any time.’
‘Why should the media make any connection between Gilda Steenkamp and Erik Lingoss?’
‘Sooner or later someone will spill the beans. People always find out, and they love to point the finger if it’s someone successful. It’s awful that she’s even suspected!’ she said, giving him a look that told him how disappointed she was in him. You’ve let the school down, you’ve let your parents down, and you’ve let yourself down. On a female her age, it was actually cute. ‘Mr Seagram is absolutely devastated. He’s devoted to her.’
‘He is?’
A little frown creased her brows. ‘Of course he is. Just the Saturday before all this happened, he took her out for a special celebration for their wedding anniversary.’
‘It was their anniversary?’
‘Well, the actual anniversary was back in October, but she’d been too busy. He took her to dinner at the Ritz, booked a chauffeured car so she wouldn’t have to drive—’
‘Why would she have to drive?’
‘Well, he won’t drive her car – says it’s too small, gives him backache. And his Bentley’s got something wrong with it, an electrical fault, so it’s in the repair shop. Anyway, it’s nicer to be driven, and it meant he could have a glass of wine as well. And he bought her roses – which must have cost a bit, in November – and a pair of diamond earrings. Had them brought to the table with the champagne, and arranged for the harpist to play “Oh How We Danced on the Night We Were Wed”. So romantic!’ She sighed.
‘It sounds it,’ he said, mentally sticking a finger down his throat. Did women really like that sort of thing? Of course he knew some did, but surely the magnificently intellectual Gilda Steenkamp was above all that? More interestingly, was she at that point already planning to kill Erik Lingoss just three days later? The thought that she might have sat through a glutinous wedding-anniversary celebration with that on her mind intrigued him. Or had the killing been a moment of madness?
In either case, what was Greyling’s connection with it all? He should remember why he was here.
‘It was you I wanted to talk to, anyway,’ he said. ‘Do you remember when this shop was used for an episode of Lockhart?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘It was a big bit of excitement in our lives. Or, well, we thought it would be. It didn’t turn out quite as exciting as we expected, because they wouldn’t let us near while they were filming. I sort of hoped we might be in it – you know, in the background, just for local colour – but they shut the shop for two days and I had to stay outside with the general public. Still, there it was, our shop on TV, and Mr Seagram said it was really good publicity.’
‘So you didn’t get to meet the stars?’ Atherton said in a voice of sympathy.
‘Only in passing. Mr Seagram gave me the days off, so I stood outside for a lot of the time to watch, and I saw them going in and out. And the first day, one of the production assistants asked me where the nearest Starbucks was, so I said I’d go for her, and she let me. I got the coffees for everyone, and Jon Sanford said thank you to me in person and gave me such a lovely smile.’
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