One May Smile

by Penny Freedman

  There was a pause as he listened, his face growing scarlet. ‘What do you mean doesn’t want to talk to me? He can’t decide that. He can’t just leave me out to dry here. I need lawyers. You tell him, he leaves me here and I tell everything. Right? You just tell him. Hello? Hello?’ he looked at the receiver in bewilderment for a moment, then hurled it against the wall. He stood looking at it as it dangled from its flex, visibly getting himself under control. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Bill me for any damage.’ Then he dropped back into his chair. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘New ball game. You got questions, I got answers. Shoot.’ And he opened his arms wide, presenting a target.

  In the event, there was little need for questions; Ray Porter in this mood was a self-starter. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of him, and he talked, rapidly and intensely. Yes, Sir Bruce Asquith had taken him on as security for his son. He’d registered with an agency after he came out of the army and done various bits of security work, and then three months ago he had landed this job. It was supposed to be a standard minding job. Bruce Asquith said he was worried about the hate mail he’d been getting and didn’t like the idea of his son being off in Denmark without someone to keep an eye on him, but now he thought about it – and here Porter unclasped his hands and rapped his knuckles against his head – now he thought about it, he realised that he’d been stupid. This job had been about the blackmail all along. Conrad had started his threats to Jim and his dad had taken him on to sort it out. That had been his job and he’d done it. ‘Following orders,’ he said. ‘Just following orders.’

  ‘You’re talking,’ Scott said, ‘as though you were still in the army. Following orders is no defence in a civil court.’

  Porter slapped his hand on the table. ‘As far as I was concerned,’ he said, ‘I had a mission and it was my job to complete it. Just deal with it were my orders and that’s what I did. Whatever it took.’ He leaned back, momentarily sated.

  ‘And whatever it took was three – maybe four – deaths?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Bollocks to that.’ He leaned back. ‘Deaths? I didn’t kill anybody and didn’t intend to. Let me tell you, if I’d wanted them dead they’d be dead. Three years in the army, I know how to kill.’

  ‘What about Conrad?’

  ‘I’ve told you – ‘ he was making a stabbing motion at Scott as he spoke ‘– I had nothing to do with that. That was when the trouble started. We’d sorted him. The woman – Karin – wasn’t playing ball and there was nothing he could do. We paid off the brother to be on the safe side and that was that. Conrad was a pain in the arse and driving Jim mad but that wasn’t my problem. Then he got himself killed and the girl – Sophie – went out of control, started blabbing about the blackmail story. I didn’t know Jim had told her the whole thing. So she needed a lesson, a warning. Whatever it took to shut her up.’

  ‘You don’t think you misjudged your warning? You must have known there was a good chance you’d kill her.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to go like that. She struggled and it went wrong.’

  ‘Excessive force. Was that what got you thrown out of the army?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Porter sat back, arms crossed against his chest. His eyes looked smaller, his face slack and puffy.

  ‘And Karin Møller? What was the trouble with her,’ Mortensen asked, ‘if she had said she was not going to tell her story?’

  ‘She couldn’t be trusted, silly bitch.’ He was sullen now, his earlier excitement drained away. ‘I saw her coming here. She ran off when she saw me but I knew she’d be back. She needed a lesson.’

  ‘The irony is,’ Scott commented, ‘that if you’d left her alone she would have caused no trouble. It was your threats that made her decide to go to the police.’

  Porter turned furious, piggy eyes on him. ‘Bollocks,’ he said.

  ‘And Gina Gray. You got that wrong too. She hadn’t been in Sophie’s room at the hospital.’

  Porter stared at him. ‘Then why was she acting scared?’

  ‘She’d guessed.’

  ‘How?’

  Mortensen intervened. ‘It relates to deficiencies in your English grammar. Your text message to Sophie.’

  ‘Well, bully for her. She’d be no loss anyway. Patronising old bitch.’

  ‘You had a difficulty by then, didn’t you?’ Mortensen enquired gently. ‘There were three of them – Sophie, ready to talk, her mother, ready to listen, and Gina Gray, not to mention the police. It was running out of your control. How were you going to silence them all?’

  Sweat was breaking out on Porter’s forehead and he wiped it off with the back of his forearm. ‘One target at a time,’ he said. ‘That’s operational procedure. One target at a time.’

  ‘And Gina Gray was your first target because she was the one you could get at,’ Scott said. ‘As a matter of interest, what were you planning to do with her? Was she someone else who just needed a lesson or was she to be eliminated?’

  ‘I hadn’t decided.’ He wiped his brow again. ‘The priority was to take her out of circulation so I could deal with the others.’

  ‘Were you planning to phone Bruce Asquith for your orders?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Porter thumped the table. ‘I made the decisions. It was my mission.’

  ‘So what happened to just following orders?’

  ‘You don’t understand. I was given a mission. Whatever it takes.’

  ‘And if it took killing Gina Gray?’

  ‘Then I’d have done it. And I won’t say I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.’

  *

  Later, James Asquith was released and Scott was disconcerted to recognise the good-looking, middle-aged man who came to pick him up as Andrew Gray. How long had he been here? Why had Gina not told him he was here? Why was he making himself useful? Andrew Gray looked equally surprised to see Scott and the two of them nodded brusquely at one another.

  ‘Gina Gray’s ex-husband,’ he said to Mortensen as they watched them leave.

  ‘Really?’ Mortensen looked at him speculatively and then consulted his watch. ‘I don’t know about you, but I had no lunch. Would you like to join me for an early supper in the town? There is a place nearby that does excellent frikadeller – meatballs.’

  ‘Just let me make a phone call,’ Scott said.

  Gina’s voice, as she answered the phone in her room at the hotel, had a slightly dangerous note of excitement in it. ‘Did you get him bang to rights?’ she asked.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Good. Well it’s party time tonight. Passports have been returned and a lot of people are going home. And James is out – but you probably know that.’

  ‘I do. But it was quite a surprise to find your ex-husband picking him up. When were you going to tell me that he was here?’

  ‘I discovered him at the villa this morning. The events of the day quite knocked him out of my head.’

  ‘But you asked him to come, presumably, when you thought you might need a lawyer, two knights being better than one?’

  ‘Oh piss off, David,’ she said.

  *

  The meatballs were excellent, as promised, and they ate them sitting outside a small restaurant just off the town square. They came, fragrant and steaming, with a large dish of new potatoes and a heap of sweet and sour cabbage. They were washed down with several glasses of beer and were followed by a buttery apple cake. Scott determined to banish the Gray family from his mind and focus on the food. Mortensen was a good companion, ready to eat in silence for some time but then gently leading him into conversation. They talked about their careers but steered away, for the most part, from the personal. After they had finished their coffee, Mortensen suggested a walk round the town and they took a long, winding, leisurely stroll, which brought them back eventually, with the mild darkening of the sky that saw in the northern summer night, to the police station, where their cars were parked.

  ‘Can you wait a moment,
’ Mortensen asked, ‘while I fetch something?’

  He went inside and came back with a small object in a brown envelope. ‘Gina Gray’s phone,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be able to give it to her.’

  *

  Back at the Marienlyst, Gina was in bed and the light was off. He put her phone down on the bedside table and she stirred. ‘Did you get a confession?’ she asked.

  ‘More or less. He insists that he wasn’t responsible for Conrad’s death, though.’

  ‘That’s because he wasn’t,’ she mumbled and nestled further into her pillow. ‘Tell you in the morning.’

  19

  MORE PIECES OF EIGHT

  Not where he eats but where he is eaten. 4.3

  I do wish David hadn’t summoned Annie to look after me. I really don’t need looking after. All I need is a bath and a hair wash and some clean clothes – and then some peace and quiet, which I won’t get from Annie. So, we start off all right: I shut myself in the bathroom for a long soak and a hair wash and then wrap myself in the soft, white dressing gown provided by the hotel while Annie blow dries my hair for me, which is nice. When I’m done, she takes my poor little green dress down to reception to see if they can get it laundered for me, and it’s when she comes back that things start to go wrong. I’m curled up quite happily in a chair in my cosy dressing gown but she reckons I’ve had enough recovery time and wants to pump me for details about what exactly happened at the hospital. I am both too tired to go over it all again and cautious about saying too much until I know that Ray has officially been charged, so I am evasive and she is cross. I propose that we watch television. Somewhere, I suggest, on one of the myriad channels offered, there will be a British or American film with Danish subtitles. We can enjoy the film and learn Danish at the same time.

  ‘We can’t possibly enjoy the film,’ she says, ‘because you’ll spoil it by constantly pointing out fascinating things about Danish grammar and vocabulary.’

  ‘How could that possibly spoil it?’ I ask, reaching for the remote. ‘Well, what do you know? Gone with the Wind has just started. Wonderful,’ I say. ‘I think you’ll find on the table over there a little box of complimentary chocolates, which I’ve resisted so far. Now’s the time for them.’

  So, I enjoy myself anyway, though Annie huffs and puffs a lot, and rolls her eyes when I practice saying, jeg vil aldrig være sulten igen, which is of course I will never be hungry again. Before we get to Helt ærligt min kære, jeg kerer ikke en døjt, which is the one about giving a damn, Annie’s phone rings and she has a long conversation out on the balcony, returning in high excitement to say that James has been released, Jon is out of hospital and they have all been told they can retrieve their passports. There is a move afoot to celebrate all this with a farewell dinner this very evening and here at the Marienlyst seems to be the best place, since the Petrosians and the McIntyres are staying here. As she is on the spot, she has put herself in charge and she heads off downstairs to harass people other than me. She returns briefly to say that it’s all organised, that she’s going back to the villa to change and that she hopes I’ve got something decent to wear. Then she’s gone and I’m left to enjoy the death of Melanie in peace. After that I shall have to worry about what to wear.

  It is a bit of an issue, actually, because the green dress is hors de combat and I’m not sure I have anything else that’s even clean, let alone smart. I find, though, when I rummage in the wardrobe, that I have an outfit, prudently included for just such an occasion. I had a first or last night party in mind, and not this sort of last night, but it will do fine – some wide-leg silk trousers that I hesitate to call palazzo pants, since that seems to be laying claim to a level of glamour beyond my reach, and a fetching black top with a plunge neckline that Annie won’t like. Excellent, then.

  I start getting ready in great good humour: Annie has done my hair well, I have an outfit, I am a heroine of sorts, and I shall be going down to dinner with David by my side, which will be one in the eye for Andrew. Then David rings and is ridiculous about Andrew being here and I refuse to defend myself and he hangs up on me so now, I suppose, I shall not be going down to dinner with David by my side and the whole evening loses its savour. I could ring David and apologise, I know, but I’m a stupid, stubborn woman so I don’t.

  *

  Because I’m not looking forward to the evening any more, I manage to be late going down and I arrive to find that of the two large tables commandeered by our group, one has all the adults on it. The other one, where things look a lot jollier, has no spaces so I take my place meekly among the old. That place, unnervingly, is between Artos Petrosian and Jacob Wagner. It never occurred to me that the Wagners would be here. It’s hard to define exactly what sort of occasion this is, but whatever it is it hardly seems the place for them. It’s not a celebration exactly, I know, but there’s a lot of hilarity already on the other table: they’ve been released, they’re going home. How can Conrad’s father bear to be here? And how can it be, after all I’ve gone through today, that I’m the person who is going to have to negotiate a conversation with him? How come Andrew, the spectacularly absentee parent, is sitting in the parental role next to Annie, hobnobbing cheerfully with the McIntyres, while I am down the other end of the table, hemmed in by a couple of oversized multimillionaires?

  I have a dangerous urge to stand up and ‘out’ Andrew. This man is an impostor, I want to declare in full prosecutorial style. He is a fraud, an impersonator masquerading as a father when he has never done the job, not the first time round, nor the second time round, from the evidence we see before us. This man has a wife and baby back in England, Ladies and Gentlemen. A pregnant young wife and a year-old baby. What is he doing here?

  I don’t, of course. Instead, I turn to Jacob Wagner and say in my best, empathetic voice, ‘I’m afraid this must be very difficult for you.’ I don’t actually feel very empathetic. I hold him a lot to blame for the events of the last week or so, as a matter of fact, but I can be an impostor too, and this evening I’ve decided on quiet, smiling and sympathetic as my masquerade because it’s quite restful and I haven’t the energy for anything else. It turns out, though, that Mr Wagner can impersonate too; he can do the fatherhood thing just as well as Andrew can. Before I have even had time to butter a bread roll, he has launched onto a series of anecdotes designed to demonstrate what a great dad he has always been to his eldest son. The tales have some plausibility, it must be admitted. He doesn’t try to convince me that he and Conrad barbecued or fished or sailed or hiked together like a happy father-son duo from one of his own movies. He tells me how the infant Conrad loved to get walk-ons in his movies (first time on set, six days old!), how he delighted in going to premieres dressed in a tiny tuxedo, how he was the most popular boy at school because he would invite friends home to watch cartoons in their home movie theatre. They have a ring of truth about them, these stories, but they’re all about a time before Conrad was seven years old, and after a bit this seems to occur to Jacob Wagner as well. He has eaten hardly anything but he has had a bottle of whisky brought to the table and is going through it at an alarming rate when, quite suddenly, he hits the maudlin stage. His eyes fill with tears and he moves abruptly into lachrymose self-pity and incoherent self-reproach. I can’t help him with this. I eat my dinner.

  I am not left in peace for long, though. Seeing me disengaged, Artos Petrosian turns the full beam of his alarming energy on me. He too has been doing some serious drinking, to judge by the look of him, and I fear that he may weep over me as well. Zada is sitting on the other side of him and he throws a hairy arm round her from time to time as he is talking to me. Since his talk is all about her, he seems to be presenting her as a sort of visual aid. He is very free with his arm on my side, too, hugging me frequently, which I would rather he didn’t, and which is embarrassing with his wife sitting not far from me.

  The Hon Alicia, however, is being charmed by Andrew, always a sucker for the gentry. Next to him, Ann
ie is being possibly over-solicitous to Jon, who doesn’t seem to mind, while his mother watches him anxiously on his other side. Dr McIntyre, I see, is being delightfully schmoozed by Zada, who seems unruffled by her father’s attentions. She is, presumably, used to them.

  I have done my best but by the time the main course is being cleared away I feel smothered by Artos Petrosian to the point where I’m almost unable to breathe. When I look down the table to Annie for help, all I get is a frown and a little tugging motion at the front of her dress which tells me to adjust my top so as not to frighten my fellow diners with an unsightly display of my superannuated breasts.

  When desserts are being ordered, I manage to break free and go out onto the terrace for a breath of air, but I’ve been there no time before Annie arrives. ‘What are you doing?’ she demands. ‘Why are you out here? Everyone’s wondering where you are.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re not. I just wanted some air. It’s like a pressure cooker in there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All that parental pressure. All those expectations. Don’t you feel it? Poor Zada, who can’t call her life her own; Jon, who had to be a doctor because his father is; you doing law at Andrew’s college just to please him. And then there’s Sophie, who couldn’t tell her mother she was pregnant, and Conrad – well more of Conrad another time. And James has had his life screwed up by his father, too – though at least his father’s ambition is for himself, not by proxy.’

  We have been standing side by side, looking out towards the sea but Annie gets hold of my arm and swings me round to look at her. ‘What do you think I should be doing?’ she demands.

  ‘Whatever you want to do,’ I say. ‘That’s the point. Whatever you want. Whatever will make you happy.’

  ‘That’s what you’ve always said. It’s the way you’ve tried to stop me from doing anything demanding or ambitious. Are you sure you want to go to Lady Margaret’s, Annie? It’s very academic and the teachers will be making comparisons between you and Ellie all the time, you know. I’m not sure you’ll be happy. Latin: I wouldn’t do Latin if I were you, Annie. You need an analytical mind for Latin. You’d be happier doing Spanish. Law: You’ll find it very dry, Annie. You love Drama. Why not do Drama? Oxford: Terribly competitive. Such a lot of pressure, Even if you got in you wouldn’t be happy. Even my name you had to change. I like Marianne – it’s got some dignity to it, but you’ve never called me by it. I had to be Annie – as in Little Orphan or a parlour maid. Low aspirations, that’s what you had for me. You’re a teacher, you know what low parental aspirations do to children. Why did you will me to fail?’