Faithful unto Death

by Caroline Graham

  “Right.” Barnaby heaved himself upright. “Lets go.”

  “I haven’t had my pudding.”

  “Pudding is for wimps, Sergeant.”

  The National Westminster was in the High Street just a few minutes’ walk from the station. Recoiling from this last, the unkindest cut of all, Troy followed his superior officer across the simmering car park and through the main gates. Immediately they were engulfed in a reek of exhaust fumes overlain with fried onions and recycled fat from a nearby hot-dog stand.

  Troy strode in a crisp martial manner, emphasising his extreme machismo. Wimp. What a cheek! Fair did your head in, a remark like that. In fact, if it wasn’t such an insult it would be laughable. Himself—a man with a personality so masculine and seductive it had been known to mesmerise any bit of yum-yum going at twenty paces. Muscular, good-looking, over the side so often he was known round the lockers as Maxie. Still on both feet after ten lager and blacks and father of one. Female, true, but plenty of time to rectify that. He was jealous, old porky. What else could it be?

  They waited at a pedestrian crossing. The flagstones burned through the synthetic soles of Troy’s highly polished tasselled black loafers. An elderly man came towards them draped in sandwich boards heavy with biblical instruction. Troy noted his approach sourly. The man, no doubt overcome by that irritating compulsion to share his convictions, which afflicts the overly religious, gave Troy a sugary smile. He said, “Jesus loves you.”

  “Jesus loves everybody, mate,” snapped Sergeant Troy, well equipped to recognise the emotionally promiscuous. “So don’t think you’re anything special.”

  The bank was air conditioned, which was heaven. Barnaby, newly bathed in moisture at every step, could feel the sweat drying on his shirt, the fabric easing away from his skin.

  Freddie Blakeley did not keep them waiting. Once inside the office he indicated two extremely uncomfortable looking seats, all leather straps and writhing chrome. They looked like a harness for some exceptionally gruelling medical examination. Or the practice of bizarre sexual shenanigans. Barnaby passed over his magistrate’s order.

  Blakeley did not wave it aside or give it a casual onceover, as was usually the case. He sat behind his huge teak desk with an air of great solemnity, plainly prepared to give the piece of paper as much time as it took to extract each scrap of meaning or sniff out any fraudulence.

  Barnaby watched this performance with interest while at the same time absorbing every detail of the man’s manner and appearance. After thirty years of practice, he did this almost unconsciously and without the slightest effort. Today he was especially well rewarded. The contrast between the bank manager’s orderly desk and namby-pamby ways and his appearance was most striking. Not to mince words, Freddie Blakeley looked like a gangster.

  He was short and square with meaty, muscular shoulders and meaty lips. Though thick, these were very sensuous and beautifully shaped. His skin was tough-looking but very pasty as if permanently deprived of daylight. A steel-blue shadow showed through his lightly powdered Jowels. He wore a charcoal suit with broad, chalky stripes, a satin tie embroidered with golden peacocks and, tumbling in vast folds out of his breast pocket, an emerald Paisley silk handkerchief.

  Hoping to share his pleasure in this unlikely phenomenon, Barnaby sought eye contact with Sergeant Troy who immediately averted his gaze and stared stonily out of the window.

  Blakeley folded the order neatly twice, smoothed it flat on his unmarked blotter and seemed about to speak. Barnaby braced himself for a gravelly, Neapolitan rumble making him an offer he dare not refuse. Inevitably he was disappointed.

  “A terrible business.” Blazered Home Counties, sieved through a tennis racquet. The smile had all the empty courtesy of a diplomat’s. “Terrible,” repeated Mr. Blakeley. He looked at the policemen with distaste as if, by invading the portals of his hallowed establishment, they had brought in with them a most unpleasant smell. And in a way of course they had. For what could be less fragrant than the stench of murder? “So how can I help you?” He touched his wide, hairy nostrils with the outrageous mouchoir.

  Barnaby felt it sensible to approach the terrible core of his business obliquely and so began by asking about the general health of Alan Hollingsworth’s company.

  And Mr. Blakeley replied in general terms. In front of him were several pages of A4 covered with neat columns of figures to which he hardly referred. Although without large reserves, Penstemon, it appeared, was presently stable and ticking over nicely. Unlike the majority of the bank’s business customers, they did not have an overdraft. Alan Hollingsworth’s personal account, though also permanently in the black, was somewhat more volatile. After volunteering this vague snippet of information, Mr. Blakeley zippered up. Plainly the run of unsolicited information was over.

  Barnaby’s first direct question, relating to the upset between Hollingsworth and Gray Patterson, got pretty short shrift.

  “You really can’t expect me to comment on an affair of which I know next to nothing.”

  “I believe the cause of the trouble was Hollingsworth’s need to raise a lot of money rather quickly. Did he ask the bank for a loan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you refused?”

  “I did. The business is a small one. I could not regard it as reasonable collateral against such a sum.”

  “Do you know if he tried to borrow the money elsewhere?”

  “I’ve really no idea.” Elsewhere in any case, implied Mr. Blakeley’s disdainfully curling lip, must of necessity have been a deeply inferior source.

  “Could you give me the exact date when the sum was eventually paid in?”

  Two stapled sheets were passed over. Barnaby saw immediately the payment from Patellus. Two hundred thousand pounds on 18 March.

  “I’m surprised a sum this size wasn’t paid into a deposit account. I assume Hollingsworth had one?”

  “Indeed.” Mr. Blakeley passed over a third sheet of paper. “And normally one would expect this. But, as you will see, the money did not stay around for long.”

  “Ah, yes.” Four days to be precise. The minimum clearance time. “He obviously needed it in a hurry. Do you happen to know who the relevant cheque was made out to?”

  “I thought you might need that information.” Mr. Blakeley admired his own foresight with a little moue of self-esteem. He looked down at his notepad. “F. L. Kominsky.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to hope . . .” Barnaby was sure the name of the payee’s bank was somewhere on the pad also but he never minded colluding with another man’s quirks and vanities in a good cause. In this he was quite unlike Troy who, though prepared endlessly to indulge his own dreams and self-deceptions, gave short shrift to those of others.

  “It was paid into Courts. Their Kensington branch.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blakeley.” The Chief Inspector was now running his eye down the balance column of Hollingsworth’s high interest account. For a man who owned a reasonably successful business, it was pretty modest. He pointed this out.

  “That’s true,” agreed Blakeley. “He was a heavy spender.”

  Barnaby, recalling the house and Mrs. Hollingsworth’s wardrobe, could not but agree. He said, “Now, to bring us up to the distressing present . . .” The bank manager immediately assumed a becoming gravitas, stuffing the larger portion of his rowdy kerchief out of sight. “We know that, shortly before his death, Hollingsworth was again attempting to raise a sum of money.”

  “Really?”

  “In fact, I believe that on Sunday, June the ninth, round about mid-morning, he discussed this matter with you on the telephone.”

  “Goodness.” Mr. Blakeley appeared discomposed. Plainly he preferred it when all the knowledge lay on his side of the fence. “You must have magical powers. Or were you tapping his phone for some reason?”

  “He was simply overheard.”

  “I see. Well, it was a most awkward conversation.” A compulsive straightener, Mr. Blakele
y aligned his pens on his blotter before pausing rather awkwardly himself.

  “I understand Mr. Hollingsworth was extremely distressed.”

  “Very much so. He’d rung up a few days before—”

  “Could you give me the exact date, Mr. Blakeley?”

  “Yes, I can.” The bank manager pulled a large desk diary towards him, opened it and smoothed out the perfectly flat surface. “I remember because a customer, who had an appointment about a bridging loan, complained at being kept waiting.”

  Sergeant Troy admired the constrained order of Mr. Blakeley’s desk as he turned over a page in his own notebook.

  “Here we are, Nine thirty on Friday, June seventh. He said he needed fifty thousand pounds straightaway and that it was desperately urgent. Although that amount, unlike the earlier request, was not completely out of the question, I still needed a certain amount of time to review Penstemon’s affairs. I told him it might take a couple of days and he should really come in for an interview.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He became quite distraught. Almost . . . abusive.” Mr. Blakeley’s pale, suety cheeks warmed to the recollection. “He asked how long it would take and expressed great distress when I said these things couldn’t be hurried. I’m afraid this reaction made me extremely wary. You may think that sounds rather heartless, Chief Inspector.”

  Barnaby made a vague gesture negating any such judgemental conclusion.

  “It is not hearts, however, that should be relied upon when dealing with other people’s money but a calm and rational mind. The calmer I remained, the wilder Mr. Hollingsworth became. He rang several more times during the course of the day, always striking roughly the same note. Finally I had to instruct my secretary to say I was out of the office. I did what I could on the matter then, as I was going away for the weekend, left early. My wife and I went to a wedding in Surrey and stayed overnight, returning around eleven Sunday morning to at least a dozen frantic messages on my Answerphone. I rang him straightaway.”

  “That was the call we know about?”

  “Yes. I assured him that I was doing everything I could to speed things up. He seemed furious that I hadn’t stayed at my desk until I’d got the matter sorted.” Mr. Blakeley gave a sniff of outrage so forceful it briefly closed his hirsute nostrils. “He was so hysterical that I pulled out all the stops and got the loan arranged early the following morning. And then, would you believe, he refused to come and pick it up! Said he was too ill to drive and, I must say, he did rather sound it.”

  “So what did you do, Mr. Blakeley?”

  “Put the money—he’d insisted on small denomination notes which I didn’t like at all—into my briefcase, locked it and drove over to Fawcett Green. All highly unorthodox.”

  “And how was Mr. Hollingsworth when you got there?”

  “Most unwell. I hardly recognised him.” Mr. Blakeley noted a hairline fracture between the A4 pages and closed it. “And inebriated, though I’d guessed that from the phone calls.”

  “Did he at any point say what the money was for?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you ask?”

  “It really wasn’t relevant from our point of view. The business could more than cover the debt should we need to call it in.”

  “But you must have been curious, Mr. Blakeley. Didn’t you have any ideas of your own?”

  “Well, one doesn’t wish to appear melodramatic,” said Mr. Blakeley, melodrama incarnate in his Jimmy Cagney threads, “but I did wonder if he was being blackmailed. Hard to imagine of course—a person of one’s acquaintance.”

  “What about the rest of the conversation during your visit?”

  “There wasn’t any. He virtually snatched the bag and showed me the door.”

  “Did you hear from him again after this meeting?”

  Mr. Blakeley shook his head. “The next thing I knew, Penstemon was ringing with the news of his death.”

  “Do you have any idea what the future of the company will now be?”

  “None whatsover. But I hope to be meeting with their Mr. Burbage early next week.”

  “What about Mrs. Hollingsworth, sir? Did she have an account here? Perhaps jointly with her husband?”

  “No, none at all. Even so, I have obviously written offering my sympathy on her sad loss. And any support or advice she may need.”

  Big deal. Sergeant Troy was tapping and shaking his Biro fruitlessly before taking a spare from his breast pocket. What she needs, poor cow, is a fully armed section of the Flying Squad charging up the path to wherever it is and kicking in the cellar door.

  “I’m afraid the lady is no longer at Nightingales,” Barnaby was saying. “She disappeared a week ago.”

  “More theatrics.” Mr. Blakeley sighed, plainly washing his hands of the whole messy business. “Are the two things connected, do you think?”

  “We’re at a very early stage in our inquiries. Impossible to say.”

  “Heavens, I didn’t want to know.” Huffily easing a cuff with an edge like a samurai sword away from his wrist, Mr. Blakeley revealed a flashy timepiece. “Well, I have an appointment in—”

  “Just a couple of final questions, sir.” Barnaby was already anticipating his departure from this cool, constrained environment into the sweltering outdoors and feeling rather sorry for himself. “Did Mr. Hollingsworth have a deposit box here?”

  “He did not.”

  “And do you know of any other accounts he may have had? Perhaps offshore or overseas?”

  “I am personally not aware of any such transactions. And, even if I was, the release of such information does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Bankers’ Books Evidence Act. As I’m sure you are aware, Chief Inspector.”

  The Chief Inspector got his own back for this little dig by informing Mr. Blakeley that, as a visitor to Nightingales, his fingerprints would have to be taken for the purposes of elimination. He thought the bank manager was going to pass out.

  “Queer bloke,” said Barnaby as they found themselves once more sticking to the boiling tarmac. Believing “gay” to have, by now, firmly established itself as the accepted alternative for homosexual, he had used the term in the old-fashioned sense.

  “Is he?” Though still sulking in his heart, Troy responded in a friendly manner for he could not bear to be lonely for long. “I thought that snot rag was a bit over the top.”

  They walked along for a few moments in silence, Troy pondering the recent interview, Barnaby dreaming of a nice cool drink.

  “Think Patterson’s in on this, guv?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Going to give him a tug?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Once more the boarded salvationist approached.

  “They never give up, do they?” said Troy.

  “Don’t knock it,” said Barnaby. “This could be your chance to take the veil.”

  “Nan, I’m doomed. Frying tonight, that’ll be my lot!”

  When Barnaby got back to the station, the driver on the Fawcett Green to Causton bus route was being interviewed by the officer-in-charge. The Chief Inspector sat in but made no attempt to take over, merely indicating to the officer that he should continue.

  “Yes, I do remember her.” He was looking at Simone’s picture.

  “Are you sure, Mr. Cato? It’s over a week ago. And you must get an awful lot of customers, one way or another.”

  “Yeah, but the market-day runs round the villages are special. You see the same faces, week in week out. Pensioners, youngsters with toddlers. I remember this one ’cause she’d never been on my route before. Plus she was a real looker.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Dress with flowers all over and a little coat thing to match.”

  “Did you get the impression she was by herself?”

  “Hard to judge. She was just in the queue.”

  “Did you see who she sat with?”

  “Can’t say I
did, mate.”

  “And where was she going?”

  “Causton. Asked for a single which was very unusual. Everyone always gets a return. It’s only ten pence more, y’see.”

  “And she got off?”

  “Outside Gateways. There’s only the two stops. The other’s by the post office in the main square.”

  “Notice her direction when she walked away?”

  “Sorry. I was helping somebody with a pushchair.”

  After Barnaby had once more declined to put any questions of his own, the driver signed his statement and left. In spite of the paucity of information obtained, the Chief Inspector felt quite cheerful. He had expected, given the jam-packed vehicle, absolutely nothing. Now he knew that Mrs. Hollingsworth had not planned to return to Fawcett Green—at least by public transport—and where she had got off. It was a start. And there might well be a scrap or two extra once all the other passengers had been interviewed.

  Dribs and drabs of information began to filter in. It appeared that Mrs. Hollingsworth had no bank account at Lloyds, as her husband had suggested to PC Perrot at their first meeting. This was no surprise. Nor was the fact that British Telecom confirmed that there had been no fault reported on Alan Hollingsworth’s line. And his bills were itemised.

  Sergeant Troy’s response to this snippet of information was predictably cynical. “Now we know why she was using the public. To ring up her bit on the side.”

  Having offered his deduction of the day, Troy vanished in search of a nicotine fix and Barnaby was left pondering this pretty obvious, but not necessarily correct, conclusion. Taking Hollingsworth’s unstable and jealous temperament into account, his wife could quite possibly have simply been talking to a female friend. Always assuming she had any. Perhaps the newly started investigations would turn up an ex-colleague or two. Simone Hollingsworth must have met a fair amount of people during the time she had been doing all the jobs described by Avis Jennings.

  A severely cropped wedding photograph showing a close-up of the bride had been sent out by the press office. Coupled with news of the kidnapping (and assuming that nothing even more appalling happened within the next few hours), it should make the front page of the next edition of the Evening Standard. Tomorrow the tabloids and perhaps even one or two of the broadsheets would carry the story, hopefully also on the front page.