Cruel as the Grave

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Mostly? I thought they all did.’

  ‘The bank ones do. Some of the independent ones don’t. The cash drawn out of Steenkamp’s account came from an independent.’

  ‘Are you doing this deliberately? Winding me up then letting me down?’

  McLaren looked frustrated. ‘I’m trying to tell you, guv. It was the first machine in the High Street after turning out of Campden Hill Road, and it’s in the wall between the travel shop and the Tesco Metro. It doesn’t have a camera in the machine, but it’s covered by a camera mounted above it. I looked at it before, for the Mazda, but the angle’s not wide enough to cover the road, so I put it aside. But I’ve just had another look at it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve matched the camera time to the time of the withdrawal that we got from Steenkamp’s bank statement. It’s Seagram that draws the money out. He’s wearing a hat, but you can see his profile as he turns away, and it’s definitely him. He used her card to draw the money out. This is the best print-out I could get.’

  He handed Slider a print – a little grainy, but, yes, you could see that it was definitely Brian Seagram.

  ‘Oh glory be!’ said Slider.

  NINETEEN

  Artist’s Impression

  Greyling opened the door to them looking much less composed. He had been fashionably rumpled before, but now the informality was more dishevelled than cute. His face tautened at the sight of them. He had been doing some thinking since their last visit, Slider concluded.

  ‘Oh,’ said Greyling flatly. ‘You again.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you the right questions last time,’ Slider said. ‘I asked you about Gilda Steenkamp. I should have asked you about Brian Seagram. I know you wanted to tell the truth …’

  ‘I did tell the truth,’ he said indignantly.

  ‘But not all the truth.’

  Greyling thought for a beat, and then said, a touch wearily, ‘You’d better come in.’

  This time he led them up the open staircase, towards the shrill, monotonous barking that was coming from above.

  ‘That’s Floss,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Her name’s Florence – you know, The Magic Roundabout? – but when she’s naughty I call her Flossie.’

  ‘Retro chic,’ Slider heard Atherton murmur from behind him.

  Florence turned out to be a miniature poodle, waiting at the top of the stairs in the perfect position from which to launch herself at the face of someone coming up. Fortunately Greyling was in the lead; he got the dog in the chest and saved his visitors inconvenient punctures. Cradled in his arms as he turned at the top, the dog relinquished barking in favour of a slow warning snarl. ‘Shut up, Floss! She’s such a naughty girl!’ Greyling said. ‘Don’t you love dogs? Poodles especially. They’re so clever. She has me wound round her little claw.’

  Slider, who did love dogs, gained the level floor, stood up straight, and gave the dog a look in which manliness mingled with understanding. Greyling had had the beast dyed pale blue, and he thought there was a touch of shame-facedness in its defiance. Florence stopped snarling to smell him, and gave an ingratiating wiggle of her rear end.

  ‘She likes you!’ Greyling said. ‘Do you like the colour? It’s called Innocent Blue. I’m going to try Pattypaws Pink next time. She is a girl, after all. You can get lots of lovely colours. It’s all organic, perfectly safe for doggies. It washes out over ten washes. But you have to be careful of their precious eyes.’

  Atherton had now left the staircase, and Greyling put the dog down and led the way further in. Flossie shook herself vigorously, sniffed Slider’s shoe with a connoisseur’s air, and trotted after him, ignoring Atherton – which suited Atherton just fine. In his book, there were dogs and dogs.

  The whole first floor was an open-plan living area, with polished wood floors, off-white walls and downlighting. There were abstract paintings on the walls, and modern art pieces scattered around – giant ceramics, stone and glass sculptures, an enormous beaten copper salver, a vast piece of what looked like driftwood mounted on a block, and among them one or two rather lovely bronzes. There was a huge and squashy sofa upholstered in black, purple and blue Paisley-pattern, into a corner of which Greyling curled himself. The dog followed him, climbed onto his stomach and settled down, and Greyling waved Slider and Atherton to two matching huge and squashy armchairs.

  The chatter, the informal pose, the studied air of insouciance, were blinds, Slider understood, meant to convince them of his innocence. Or perhaps Greyling himself needed convincing. His mouth was nervous, and his eyes moved unsteadily from one intruder to the other. He crammed a finger into his mouth and gnawed at the nail, then remembered and pulled it away. Slider left him a challenging silence, into which Greyling finally launched himself with an unconvincing laugh. ‘Am I supposed to offer you refreshments? I don’t know what the protocol is with the boys in blue.’

  ‘This is not your first dealing with the police,’ Slider reminded him. ‘You’ve been arrested twice.’

  Greyling looked suddenly drawn and frightened. ‘But I haven’t done anything this time! I really haven’t! You’re not going to arrest me?’ He gripped the dog inadvertently tightly and it let out a yip.

  ‘I don’t want to arrest you,’ Slider said. ‘If you co-operate fully, answer my questions—’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will!’

  ‘Then begin by telling me what your relationship with Brian Seagram is.’

  ‘He’s a lovely man. Ever so kind,’ said Greyling nervously, as if he didn’t quite know what question he was answering.

  Slider realized he would have to be more specific. And as there was a shine of sweat under Greyling’s eyes, he might need to be soothed and led up to the difficult bit by easy stages.

  ‘When did you first meet him?’ he asked.

  ‘About eighteen months ago, it was.’ He seemed relieved by the question, and grew expansive. ‘At the motor show – I was doing demo jobs while I was resting between parts. It’s pretty dire, but it pays the bills. He was there looking for a new car – he loves his wheels! Well, we got talking, and he asked me out to dinner – said I looked half-starved, which I took as a compliment, I can tell you! – but as it happened I wasn’t able to make it.’

  ‘You were arrested for tooting up in the gents,’ Atherton supplied.

  Greyling gave him a hurt look, and continued to narrate to Slider. ‘But I bumped into him again on the last day – I’d left a sweater in the office and I went back to try and get it – and he took me out for lunch. Well, we got talking again – he was ever so easy to talk to – and it went on from there. We’ve been friends ever since.’

  ‘Very special friends,’ Atherton suggested, ‘for him to buy you a house.’

  ‘He didn’t buy it for me, he bought it for himself,’ Greyling said indignantly. ‘I just live here.’

  ‘I bet you don’t pay any rent.’

  ‘I look after his things.’ He waved a hand around the room. ‘The paintings, the artworks. There’s a lot of valuable pieces here.’

  ‘But why would he need to buy a house for them, when he’s got a large flat already?’ said Slider.

  ‘Because his home’s full of antiques. And it’s not really his – it’s his wife’s. Well, it’s in both their names, but she calls the shots. And Brian hates antiques – all that awful brown furniture and dingy old oil paintings! He likes clean, modern lines and vibrant contemporary art. Colour! Movement!’ He waved his arms again, and the dog, which had been dozing off, jerked its head up and gave him a warning look.

  ‘You say he hates antiques—’ Slider began, and Greyling interrupted eagerly.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say – why is he in the antiques business? But he inherited it from his father, you see, and it’s all he knows. He makes his living from it, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it. I totally understand. You don’t choose your parents, so why should you be expected to like the same things they do? My father’s a solicitor, he wan
ted me to go into the law like him. I said I’d sooner stick pins in my eyes.’ He gave an artificial shudder.

  ‘It can’t have gone down well with him when you got busted for drugs,’ Atherton suggested.

  He looked sulky. ‘You keep bringing that up! I was just unlucky. Everybody in our business does blow, to keep their weight down. And to keep going on long shoots. It’s a stressful job. Hours and hours on your feet, and you have to stay sharp.’

  ‘But it would reflect badly on your father’s business to have a son—’

  ‘Yes, all right, he cut me off!’ Greyling snapped. ‘That’s why I was living in a grotty bedsit in Ladbroke Grove. That’s why Brian moved me into this house – well, you couldn’t expect him to visit me there. It wasn’t a nice area.’

  They had come to the point. Slider decided the question must be asked. ‘Are you lovers?’

  Surprisingly, Greyling blushed. ‘Of course, you would jump to that conclusion! But it’s nothing like that.’

  ‘It must be something like that,’ Atherton said mildly. ‘He buys you a house in a very ritzy area. He gives you money. He must be getting something in return.’

  ‘I told you, I look after his collection. He gives me housekeeping money, and a bit of walking-about money, that’s all. So I can stay here and take care of things. You talk as if I was some kind of—’

  ‘There’s no judgement here,’ Slider intervened soothingly. ‘I just want to understand what your relationship is. And I would advise you to be completely honest with me. You’ve already impeded my investigation on a previous occasion. The last thing you want is to face jail time. Now, there must be something more between you and Brian Seagram than just friendship. There must be something physical.’

  The blush intensified, and he looked away. ‘Look, it’s not what you think. I’m not gay. All right, I camp it up a bit, but that’s just an act. I started doing it to annoy my father at first, and it sort of got to be a habit. And it’s kind of funny, you know, the Palare. A lot of people in the business talk like that.’ He seemed to sit up a bit straighter, and his manner became noticeably less camp from then on. ‘I was desperate when Brian offered me a place to live, and I did think I might have to … you know, do something. Older guys – sometimes they want spanking or wanking or something … But it wasn’t that. He likes to look at me. Nude.’

  The last word seemed forced out of him. It hit the air and hovered there like a fart in a teashop. In the silence that followed, Slider could hear the dog snore – teeny Magic Roundabout whistles. A car went past outside, mumbling on the cobbles. Greyling found a new courage and now met Slider’s eyes. ‘He pretended at first that he wanted to sketch me – you know, for me to be his artist’s model, sort of thing – but he’s a crap drawrer.’ A short, faint smile. ‘I could draw better than him, and I’d make a mess of paint-by-numbers. But he was embarrassed at first about asking me to strip off. It was a long time before he stopped pretending to draw me. It’s … if you want to know, it is a bit weird. He gets me to take up different poses and he stares at me, sometimes he walks round to get different angles. But in the end, it’s not hurting me, is it? And he’s a decent sort of bloke, he’s very kind. He bought me Florence for my Christmas present. He knew I’d always wanted a dog – my father would never let me have one, he hates dogs. OK, so he’s got a weird sort of fetish, if that’s what it is, but there’s a lot worse out there, and he’s not doing anyone any harm, is he?’

  ‘Is there any touching involved?’ Slider asked, because he could hear Atherton’s disbelief coming out of his pores.

  ‘A bit, sometimes. But not … you know, sex stuff. He’ll stroke my arm, or my back, rearrange me, turn my head a different way. It’s the look of my body he likes, the lines, the way the muscles move. It’s an artistic thing, not a sex thing,’ he concluded earnestly. ‘He says the only part of the antiques business he likes is the Greek statues, because the Greeks understood the beauty of the male form. He says the male body is the pinnacle of creation.’

  ‘And he’s never asked you to touch him?’

  Now Greyling scowled. ‘No! Can’t you get your minds out of the gutter, try to have a bit of imagination? I know you’re policemen but not everything in life’s grubby and nasty. Brian thinks I’m beautiful and he loves beautiful things. It’s not even every time that I have to strip. Sometimes he just comes round to sit and look at his pictures and things. He’ll take up a bronze, for instance, and turn it over and over in his hands for ages, appreciating it.’

  ‘How often does he come round?’

  ‘Well, it used to be three or four times a week. In the early days, he’d even take me on buying trips with him. But lately – for the last few months – it’s been more like once a week, even once a fortnight.’ He shrugged. ‘And when he does come round, often we just have a drink and watch a film together. He loves all those old black and white ones. He says they’re true art, not like modern films. He’s—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hope he’s not cooling off me,’ he admitted anxiously. ‘He’s been a bit distant the last few months. Maybe he’s taken up with someone else. I don’t know what I’d do if he asked me to go.’

  ‘Tell me about the phone call you got on Tuesday the fourth.’

  The question threw him. His eyes widened and breathing quickened. ‘I didn’t do anything, I swear! I didn’t know anything. About anything.’

  ‘The phone call,’ Slider insisted.

  ‘It was from a number I didn’t know. My phone didn’t recognize it. I was surprised when I answered and it was Brian. He said are you alone, and I said yes, and he said he was on his way, he’d be there in two minutes. Then he rang off.’

  ‘Was he in the habit of dropping in on you like that?’

  ‘No, never. He isn’t a dropping-in sort of person. He always makes a date in advance. So naturally I was surprised – and a bit worried.’

  ‘How did he seem when he arrived?’

  ‘Well, all right, I suppose,’ Greyling said warily. ‘A bit … tense, maybe.’

  ‘Tense how? Nervous? Afraid? Worried?’

  ‘No, more … I don’t know. Excited, I’d say. Wound up – but in a pleased way. Well, he was pleased, anyway, when he talked about the divorce.’

  ‘Divorce?’ Atherton said, with interest. This was a new line.

  Greyling looked at him warily. He didn’t like Atherton. ‘He wanted a divorce from his wife because he said their marriage was long dead, but she wouldn’t agree to one. She said it would be bad publicity for her. She said they each went their own way as it was, so why would they need one. But he wanted to be free.’

  ‘Divorce is automatic after five years of separation,’ Atherton said. ‘If he left her she couldn’t stop it.’

  He squirmed a little. ‘But then he wouldn’t get any money from her. He said she could afford the best solicitors and she’d cut him off.’ He seemed aware this placed his benefactor in a less than flattering light. ‘When a person gets used to a certain standard of living …’ he began weakly.

  ‘Quite,’ Slider said, not wanting to alienate him – or not yet. ‘So why was he happy about the divorce that evening. Had something changed?’

  ‘He said, “I’ve got her now. I’ll give her bad publicity!”’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Greyling said, giving him an appealing look. ‘He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything like that, because, to be honest, he sounded a bit nutty when he said it – you know, over-excited. I made him a drink, I thought it’d calm him down. Then he asked me to take care of something for him. Said it was very important. And he gave me a mobile phone.’

  Slider sighed with relief, but nothing showed on the outside.

  ‘I thought it was his at first, because his was a Galaxy as well. He gave it to me and said, “Keep this safe, it’s my insurance.”’

  ‘What did he mean by that?’


  ‘I don’t like to say.’

  ‘Come on, you’ve told us the worst already – how bad can it be?’

  ‘All right, he said the police were stupid, but even they ought to be able to follow a trail of breadcrumbs. But if they were so dim they somehow missed it, the phone might have to be found. “By accident,” he said. “Or by an anonymous well-wisher.”’ He looked from one to the other, nervously. ‘I didn’t like it when he mentioned the police. I said, “What have you done?” and he said there was nothing to worry about. He said, “You won’t be involved, I promise you. Just look after the phone until I ask for it, and don’t talk about it to anyone.” And that’s all I did! It really and truly is! I didn’t know anything about anything. But when you turned up, asking about Erik Lingoss – I’d seen on the internet that he’d been murdered but of course I didn’t make any connection, not until you came asking me about him. And then … well, I didn’t know what to do.’ He looked an appeal at them. ‘I mean, I hardly knew him really, Erik.’

  ‘How well does Brian know him?’ Slider asked.

  ‘Not at all, or I didn’t think so. I introduced him back in June when we did the filming at Brian’s shop?’

  ‘For Lockhart. Yes, we know about that.’

  ‘Well, while we were hanging around outside – there’s always a lot of hanging around when you’re filming – Erik came over from the gym across the road, to see what was going on, I suppose, and remembered me from before, and we got chatting. And I suddenly thought – Erik’s a super masseur, he fixed Marjie’s neck, and Brian complains about his back a lot, why not do everyone a favour? So I took Erik round the back and introduced him to Brian. I haven’t seen Erik since, and Brian’s never mentioned him, so I thought nothing had come of it, and I never thought about it again until you came knocking on the door. But I still didn’t … I mean it can’t be anything to do with Brian, can it? He wouldn’t … he would never—’

  ‘Did you not know,’ Slider said, ‘that Erik Lingoss was Brian’s wife’s personal trainer?’