‘There was a pile of photographs there. I only looked at the top one,’ she said, and then, absurdly, giggled. ‘I only looked at the top one.’
‘Well?’ His voice was comfortable, encouraging rather than probing.
‘It was Dolly – around, oh, I don’t know how many years ago. She looked about – eighteen, maybe. You’d have liked the clothes she was wearing. All cross-cut satin and fringes – camp as a troop of boy scouts. And her hair and her make-up – honestly, it was straight out of Gold Diggers of 1932. You’d have loved it.’
‘May I see it?’ He sounded casual now. Her bag was on the table between them, and he pushed it towards her, with an almost absent-minded gesture.
‘I left it there. Couldn’t look at anything else. Shoved it back in the box and left it there. It upset me so much –’
There was a little pause and someone put a coin in the juke box, making the noise triple as people standing around shouted louder to be heard above it. ‘Why?’ he said, and then repeated it, louder. ‘Why?’
‘Because she looked like me,’ Maggy said, and tipped up her glass to swallow the last of her drink, and got up. ‘I’ve got to get out of here. Too much noise – I’m going home. I’ve got a recording tomorrow – there’s things to do –’ She picked up her bag, and thrust it under her arm, threw her jacket over her shoulders. ‘Lots of things to do.’
‘What else was in the box?’ He followed her out, threading a way through the now jam-packed bar, trying to keep up with her, trying to sound as relaxed as he could. ‘Anything else apart from photographs?’
‘Papers,’ Maggy said vaguely. They were out in the street now, and she began to walk quickly up the narrow pavement back towards the Haymarket, watching for a taxi. ‘Bits of paper. Is that taxi’s light on? Damn – someone’s got it –’
‘I’ll find you one when we get to Trafalgar Square – it’ll be easier there.’ He took her elbow, tried to slow her down. ‘What sort of bits of paper?’
‘Oh, a lot of rubbish. Nothing important. Old receipts, bills – menus – things like that.’
‘Nothing else?’ He pulled on her arm now, slowed her down even more.
She looked at him then over her shoulder and there was a new look on his face, a familiar one and she frowned, still a little hazed what with reaction from feeling ill and the vodka, and tried to place it, and then did; it was the look that had been on the solicitor Friese’s face. Eager, almost avid, solid with curiosity.
‘What should there be?’ she said lightly. ‘Damn – there’s another taxi gone. I’ll try in the middle of the road, I think –’ and she plunged into the traffic, forcing him to let go of her arm. But he followed her, and together they stood on the island in the middle as her eyes raked the oncoming traffic for a taxi.
‘Oh, I don’t know – but safe deposit boxes – you expect them to have something really worth hiding in them, don’t you? I mean –’ He moved closer, trying to make her look at him instead of looking so assiduously for a taxi. ‘When that safe deposit place in Baker Street was turned over a few years ago – d’you remember? They dug a tunnel from the place next door and got away with God knows what – and people said then a lot of the boxes had money in them. Black money.’
‘Black money?’ She couldn’t avoid looking at him; his head was thrust directly in front of her now.
‘Oh, tax fiddles, you know? And jewellery of course –hedges against inflation, all that sort of thing. And why not? Why else have a safe deposit box? If you’ve got legitimate money you invest it, or put it in a normal bank account. The only reason to have a safe deposit is for secrets –’
She moved away enough to see over his shoulder, and then, gratefully, waved furiously, ‘Taxi! Taxi, damn you – Glory be, I’ve got him. Goodbye, Oliver. See you around –’
The taxi slid to a halt beside them, the driver put his arm out to open the door for her, but still Oliver held on to her.
‘There must have been something else in there,’ he said, very loudly. ‘I mean, just photographs, bits of paper? Or were some of the papers stock certificates or something of that sort? There must have been more than –’
‘Goodbye, Oliver!’ She slammed the door shut, and said urgently to the driver, ‘Royal Crescent – just off Holland Park Road – fast as you like –’ and then leaned back as the taxi moved away into the traffic, leaving Oliver staring after it in the middle of the road.
All the way home she sat huddled in one corner of the taxi as it crept through the nose-to-tail rush hour traffic, taking almost three-quarters of an hour for the six-mile journey, staring out sightlessly at Oxford Street and then the Bays-water Road, trying to sort out her feelings, and put her thoughts into some sort of order. Why had Oliver been so interested in the safe deposit box? Why had he probed so hard? Why had he been there at all, come to that? She had accepted his presence there in the street as one of the coincidences that happen so often in London, but now she wasn’t so sure. Dammit, the Haymarket was one of the busiest streets in the whole town, and it had been half past five, the start of the rush hour. He must have been hanging around waiting for her to have met her quite so pat; and, taking that and his behaviour in the pub into account, his probing afterwards began to seem much more sinister. She had been warmed and comforted by the things he’d said to her there, staring at her over his tomato juice. There had been warmth and, she had thought, real affection, and even though the feelings she had for him all those years ago were dead now, there were enough of their ghosts left for her to have welcomed that. Had she been beguiled, softened up, deliberately? Usually when they met he was barbed, made bitchy little jokes and digs that smarted badly; why had he been so gentle tonight?
Christ, she thought, I’m getting paranoid. This really has to stop – it really must stop, right now! Deliberately, she made herself think about tomorrow. She was working only with the basic band, Dan on the percussion, Komo on the double bass, and Chalky with the clarinet. A weird line-up for her sort of music, they’d told her once, until she’d shown them just what sort of sound she could make with it. As long as there was Maggy Dundas on the piano to tie them together, you could take anything from a tin whistle to a jew’s harp and make it work. But only as long as Maggy Dundas was on the piano. Tomorrow they were working on the Elgar Variations and the Stravinsky Symphony in C. And anyone who laughed at the idea of making jazz out of those two would laugh again on the other side of their faces when they heard what she could do with them.
I’m trying too hard, she thought bleakly. If I have to build myself this high before I even begin, I’ll get nowhere. Come on, woman, admit it. You’re rattled as hell, and you’ve got a big job on tomorrow and you’re scared. That’s what it is. That’s why you’re in such a state. You need a bath and something to eat and an early night, maybe a couple of Mogadon. It’s been a rough day one way and other.
She leaned forward to speak to the driver. ‘Can’t we do any better than this? Try the back doubles, maybe?’
‘It’s like barley soup all the way from here to Shepherds Bush and beyond,’ the man said, leaning back wearily. ‘Been like it all day. You’ll do better on the tube, tell you the truth. This time of night they’re mobbed, but the trains at least run. More than this bloody traffic does. Take your pick, ducks, no skin off my nose.’
‘Oh, all right, all right –’ She leaned back. The underground – she should have picked up a train at Piccadilly; she’d have been home by now. But the thought of getting out of the taxi now and joining the mobs at Lancaster Gate station – she shook her head. She’d stick it out. Here at least she was sitting down.
By the time she reached home, she was feeling a bit less tense, had even managed to close her eyes and relax in the cab, going over the Stravinsky score in her head, and she paid the taxi driver cheerfully enough and then started the long climb to her flat.
She had been dubious when she’d first seen it. A super flat in lots of ways, of course, a magnificent living roo
m with windows at each end, because the house was on the corner, with views high across the chimney tops for miles, a good bedroom, a really well-fitted kitchen and a bathroom with a shower, a rare pleasure in a conversion like this one. Hundred-year-old houses don’t take easily to modern plumbing. But it was on the top floor and every time she was faced with six flights of steep stairs she told herself she’d have to move. Get somewhere modern, with a lift, garbage chutes. And then she’d get to the top and into her big cool white room, with its Collard and Collard piano dominating it, and think – what modern flat could take a grand? And would have walls and floors thick enough to keep the sound out?
Now, plodding heavily upwards, her bag held under one arm as she held on to the curving banister with her other hand, she counted the steps as she went, as she often did, a childhood trick that had never left her. Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five – fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three –
She muttered irritably as she reached the top flight. The blasted light had gone again. She’d complained to the landlady often enough about it, but every time she put in a new bulb, it went again. Maggy sometimes suspected the man in the flat below of coming up to steal the bulbs; he was a pernickety penny-pinching old miser, and the light fitting could be reached easily from the landing outside her own front door. One of these days she’d set some sort of trap for him, and then there’d be arguments –
The thoughts, silly, childish, mumbled through her head as she climbed on into the dimness, while the step counting went on behind them, as a sort of counterpoint, seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eight –
The attack when it came was so ridiculous that it was surprise that knocked her over more than the impact. One moment there she was counting steps and thinking sour thoughts about her downstairs neighbour and the next there was a hand tugging at her bag, and another pushing against her chest for all the world as though she was a child and someone was trying to take a bag of sweets from her. She was being pushed against the banisters so that her ribs seemed to crack against them, and she gasped and let go of her bag and heard the attacker, whoever it was, fall back against the wall and grunt with pain as he hit it, for clearly he was as startled with the ease with which he got possession of the bag as she was; and then he was half falling, half scrambling down the staircase, making a great clattering noise and leavng her in a heap on the top flight with one arm curled round the banisters and her head aching abominably where she had hit it on the banister rail.
The man with toothache stood on the kerb and watched the taxi go, and could have shouted aloud with the frustration of it. The bitch, the stupid bitch, to go by taxi at this time of night. He hadn’t got a dog’s chance of getting another one in this hubbub and even if he did it wouldn’t get him anywhere. He’d tried the ‘follow-that-cab’ routine before and both times the drivers had told him to piss off out of it, they weren’t getting involved in nothing like that, thanks very much. So he had to watch her go, helplessly, had to stand there on the kerb and watch the taxi bury itself in the clotted traffic and could do nothing about it.
What the hell would he tell them tonight when he called? There’d be all murder let loose if he didn’t do something, didn’t find out a little bit more. They’d been very pressing, very pressing indeed about it the last time he’d called. And the really maddening thing had been the way he’d been so pleased with himself, getting the first bit of info for them. He’d called the man himself, direct on his private line, something he hardly ever dared do before and told him, flat out, ‘She’s dead. Dolly Dundas, handed in her dinner pail. Heard about it from someone up at the studios.’
And he’d been pleased as Punch with the reaction he’d got ‘Is she indeed?’ the smooth voice had murmured, as silky as hot custard, even over three thousand miles of phone links. ‘Is she indeed. Well, well. That takes a little thinking about. I’ll call you back.’ And he had, not half an hour later, with very precise instructions. ‘Find out who gets the hotel. Find out who gets access to her property. It’s probably the daughter – in fact I’ll be amazed if it isn’t. But make sure. And then watch her, and tell me everything she does, everywhere she goes, you understand me? Everything.’
It had sounded so easy. Just follow some dim female. But she was so dim she never did the right things; only the dimmest of idiots would take a taxi in the middle of the rush hour, he told himself bitterly, and he turned and went along the street, pushing irritably through the crowds. He’d have to make it the record office building again, even though that hadn’t got him anywhere so far, hanging around outside there. Damn it all to hell and back, he hadn’t even managed to find out where the bloody woman lived, yet –
‘It’s getting complicated,’ the man at the desk said, and twirled his chair so that he was staring out of the window at the East River. ‘I hadn’t expected this.’
The other man said nothing, sitting and watching, his arms folded neatly across his chest.’
‘You’re sure he said the girl had gone to a safe-deposit?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Lancaster.’
‘Nothing more than that?’
‘No, sir, Not a word.’
‘I should have foreseen it. She was that sort of woman. I should have guessed it.’
‘Sir?’ the young man said, polite and a little remote, and uncrossed and recrossed his legs.
‘We’ve got to get this right, Greening.’ The man at the desk twirled his chair again so that he was looking across it at him, and his voice was softer, deeper, less abstracted. ‘It’s difficult for you, I know. You don’t understand what it’s all about, do you?’
‘That isn’t important, sir. As long as you do.’
The man at the desk smiled, and leaned back. His face was more shadowed now that the window was behind him. ‘Yes, I do. The ways of providence – I have to understand. To help you.’
‘That’s so, sir.’ For the first time the young man showed some animation, his mouth lifting in a smile. ‘To help us.’
‘Well, let me tell you a little. Just a little. Like you, I was different. I lead you now, but I was different. And before I was as I am now things happened – bad things. You understand?’
‘Bad things happened to me too, sir,’ the young man said, and leaned forward. ‘I –’
‘Not now, Greening. Not now. I’m explaining to you. Listen.’
‘Sir.’
‘The bad things don’t matter to me any more. But they could matter to the lost ones. The ones we must help. You understand me? It’s important that you should.’
‘Sir.’
The man at the desk sighed, a sharp almost irritated little sound and then smiled, wide and soft. ‘No, I suppose you don’t. Let me put it on the line. There are facts about my past that could be bad for us. For you as well as me. It could discredit all our work. That would never do, would it?’
‘No sir. Never.’
‘So. I’m telling you we have to ensure, don’t we, that the – these facts stay where they are. Not talked about. Forgotten.’
‘We do indeed, sir.’
‘And that girl –’
‘That girl knows the facts? Whatever they are?’ The young man was as quiet and polite as ever, but there was a smoothness about him that made the other look at him sharply. But he had imagined it. There was no guile there, none at all. Just obedience and interest. That was all.
‘This old woman knew. The one who died. I thought it would die with her, I suppose, but now I’m not so sure. A safe deposit box – so I’m not so sure. That’s the problem.’
‘Not the man that Gibbs looks after? I thought he was the problem, sir.’
The man at the desk laughed easily, and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, of course, he could have been. And you’re right. He was part of it too. But I’m dealing with him. Stupid creature –’ and there was a note of venom in his voice, just for a moment. ‘Believe me, he’s in the same boat as I am, in his picayune fashion. But he hadn’t the wit to see it, so he’s more wo
rried about what I might say, instead of trying to worry me. He’s a fool. Forget him. I want you to concentrate on the girl. Because if she finds out, then – she’s not a fool. And she’s not soft, the way her mother was. The old woman never worried me, because of the sort of woman she was, but this one’s different. So watch her, you hear me? Because one way and another, there’s a lot to worry about here. Quite apart from the money.’
‘Money, sir?’
The other man lifted his brows at him, smiling again. ‘Didn’t I tell you? There’s a lot of money involved, I rather think. A lot. Enough to do a good deal of the work we have to do, hmm? The sort of money that’ll make money. So you see, there’s a lot to think about. And a lot of reasons to keep an eye on her. I’m relying on you, now.’
‘Sir,’ the young man said, and smiled.
4
‘I think I’d better move back in, darling, don’t you?’
‘If you like.’ She was staring at the wall, her eyes fixed on one of Saul’s fancy etchings, but not really seeing it Her head still ached a little, and the coffee she had had as soon as she got here had been a mistake; it had made her headache even worse.
‘Only if you like, Maggy. No way am I going to force anything on you. But you need looking after, for God’s sake. I mean, if I’d been there as usual last night, it wouldn’t have happened.’
She looked at him now and managed to smile, a twisted little grimace.
‘That’s one hell of a way to talk to a woman these days! Christ, man, you’ll get yourself dragged in front of the Equal Opportunities Commission or something –’
‘Oh, let’s not get on to that tack!’ he said and made a face at her. ‘I wasn’t doing the male chauvinist bit – just making the point that you wouldn’t have been so likely to be mugged on your own doorstep if someone else had been on the other side of the door. Man or woman. If you know a woman you’d rather share your flat with, great. Go call her. I’m just making the point that you shouldn’t be living on your own, and I’m here and ready –’
Reprise Page 4
