by Adam Baron
‘Don’t you ever bloody knock?’ I asked.
‘Only when I’m arresting someone,’ Andy Gold said. ‘And then, very very loudly.’
I sat back down and Andy must have telepathically heard me offer him a seat because he sat down too.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what you got?’
I told Andy that I didn’t have anything more than he did.
‘Nothing?’ he asked, opening one eye wider than the other, not sounding like he entirely believed me. ‘Not a sausage?’
‘Not even a chipolata, mate.’
Andy didn’t have much to give me either. He and his team had shown the picture round to everyone they’d interviewed before and no one had been able to tell them anything.
‘I saw the widow,’ he said, folding his arms. ‘Not bad, not bad at all. Most blokes would have been more than content poking that every night, don’t you think?’
I shrugged.
‘If they were straight. Very nervous though, when I saw her. More so than before.’
‘Probably the picture,’ I said.
‘Maybe. You’d already shown her it though, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Funny thing,’ Andy said, pretending to think. ‘She never mentioned that you’d been to see her.’ He folded his arms and sat back a little. ‘It was me who brought it up, right at the end.’
‘So?’
‘So nothing. Just a little odd, that’s all. Wouldn’t you say? It was only a couple of hours after you spoke to her. I thought she might have said something.’
‘Instantly forgettable,’ I explained, ‘that’s me. Always been my problem that has.’ Andy made a hmm sound but I didn’t let him pursue it. I told him that if there wasn’t anything very pressing then I had to go out. I stood up and he followed me out of my office into the corridor.
* * *
Michael Chalkley lived in a smallish terraced house in a back street two minutes away from the B-movie alien spacecraft which is Southgate tube station. He opened the door to me and led me into a small sitting room which had no carpet, and was crowded with yellow packing crates.
‘We’re moving,’ he told me. ‘Tomorrow. You were lucky to catch me.’ He made some space on a sofa, and invited me to sit down.
Chalkley was a pleasant-looking man in his early forties. He had an elongated, rather sad face and had long since finished balding on top. Three toddlers, two of which I could see were twins, clung to his legs like vines and he had perfected that most impressive of feats: splitting his consciousness in two. He was paying a great deal of attention to me, as well as noting and responding to his kids’ every movement and mood swing. He took his harassment, both from the kids and from myself, with an admirably stoic equanimity.
‘The twins,’ Chalkley explained, indicating the packing cases. ‘We need a bigger place. And I want to be closer to the airport. Marion’s mother doesn’t want us to go, she lives round the corner, but we’ve decided.’ He pulled the eldest child, a girl of four, on to his lap.
‘Where are you off to?’ I asked, suppressing a yawn. I felt slightly nauseous and detached from myself.
‘Hayward’s Heath,’ he said. ‘I’ve been transferred to Gatwick. I made pilot last month.’
I must have reacted to this remark because Chalkley smiled.
‘It was fixed a long time before Edward was killed,’ he said. ’Anyway, I don’t think it works like that. You can’t murder your way up the BA ladder as far as I’m aware, although it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that some of our executives had done it that way. No, I’ve been on all the courses, this has been fixed for some time.’
I asked Chalkley what kind of man Edward was. He told me that he had really liked him, that Edward was kind and always very appreciative of those working under him.
‘Some pilots can be arrogant,’ he said, ’especially those who’ve been in the forces. Edward wasn’t. The flight attendants got on with him especially well. A lot of them were very upset by what happened to him. One of the men, Jeff Downs, is gay and he felt very bad. He told me that he often went to that bar after work. He would have gone there that night but he had a date in town.’
While Chalkley sorted out the odd argument, filled some beakers with apple juice and performed minor first aid, he told me that he hadn’t thought Edward was gay and was surprised to find out that he was. It didn’t make him think any less of him.
‘What about that last trip?’ I asked. ‘What mood was he in?’
‘He was quite subdued,’ Chalkley said, nodding slightly. ‘As if there was something on his mind.’
I pictured Edward, brooding about his wife.
‘He seemed better on the flight back though, and he seemed quite cheerful when I left him, although, thinking about it, there might have been something forced about it. I wanted to get home otherwise I might have gone for a quick drink with him. We often did that before braving the traffic.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Yes. I wish I had.’ Chalkley let out a breath. ‘I hardly need to say that I very much wish I had gone for a drink with him that night.’
That was all I wanted to know really, although I lingered a little while with Chalkley, asking questions I already knew the answer to or which I didn’t really need answering. I accepted the coffee he offered me, and played with his kids while he made it. His eldest, Natasha, was very bright, and as pretty a child as you could imagine. We drank our coffees and then Chalkley showed me to the door. As I thanked him for his time I thought about the ‘if onlys’ which feature in almost every case I have ever dealt with. The ‘if onlys’ which haunt those who are left when someone is killed. I shook Chalkley’s hand.
‘Out of curiosity,’ I said, ‘and if it’s OK to ask, why didn’t you stick around for a drink with Edward that night?’
‘Oh, the flight was late in. Head winds over Biscay. I wanted to get back.’
‘I see. How late were you?’
‘Half an hour,’ he said. ‘Forty minutes maybe.’
‘Right. Right.’
I left Chalkley on his doorstep and walked up the garden path. I turned to shut the gate and then waved back at Natasha, who had climbed up on to the windowsill in the living room.
* * *
Lloyd lit a cigarette, blew the smoke across the table at me and took a sip from his orange juice. I’d told him it had to be a gin and tonic but I was willing to overlook the point. If I had thought more carefully when I was trying to find out who he was from the security guard at the House of Commons, I wouldn’t have asked if he was John Major. He didn’t look much like him. It would have been a lot more credible to have pegged him for the current Chancellor, Gordon Brown. He had a squarish, set face, full dark hair, and a head which seemed slightly too large for his body. His eyes were as dark as his suit and his teeth were as bright as the crisp white shirt which seemed a little tight round his neck. He put his lighter down beside his glass and looked at me.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
I’d left Michael Chalkley and driven down to see Joe Nineteen to give him a finder’s fee I owed him from the week before. Joe is a West Indian former bus conductor of a very advanced though indeterminate age, who lives by the bus station at Finsbury Park. Joe often uses his connections on the London bus network to spot missing kids for me, and when he does so I visit him, which is always a pleasure, and give him an amount of money commensurate with how difficult it was for his contacts to locate a particular fugitive. He lives on his own, sitting on a stool outside his front door in any weather but rain, and he always has a pot of goat curry on his stove. Always. It’s all he ever eats, and if I could make it as well as he can it would be all I ever ate too.
After a small bowlful of the stuff, I bought a copy of the Standard and walked up Stroud Green Road. I sat in a corner of The Colt on red velveteen and flicked through the paper keeping an eye on the door. Then I took out the picture and did a few sums. The security v
ideo had a digital clock on it. The plane had been late in and the time on the photo was only thirty-five minutes after the plane had landed, which meant that Edward couldn’t have been sitting at the bar for very long before he left. The barman had seemed to imply that Edward had been there longer but this didn’t really mean anything. I was annoyed that I hadn’t been able to get to him before the police had. If a lazy cop thinks he knows what happened in a situation it isn’t difficult to get a witness to agree, especially when you’re talking marginally different time scales. It meant, however, that if the man in the hat had picked Edward up, he was a pretty fast worker. Or that he knew him. He was his lover and had arranged to meet him there.
Graham Lloyd came in a few minutes after five and looked around, presumably for me. Since he didn’t know what I looked like he wasn’t going to see me until I wanted him to. I watched him walk up to the bar, buy his drink and take it to a small round table in the back of the large room. He sat down and immediately lit a cigarette, pulling on it impatiently. I wondered if I was looking at a killer, at a man who had paid for the murder of a colleague’s brother and made it look like part of a series. Once again I saw the lascivious, teasing way he had kissed the dead man’s wife. I wanted it to be him.
Lloyd dragged on his cigarette so hard he definitely had something on his mind. I let him finish it before going over and introducing myself.
I sat down opposite, he lit up another cigarette and blew smoke in my face.
‘Is it money?’ he asked me with a smile. His tone was friendly. ‘Is that it? Think you can make a few quid out of me? Mmm? Well, you’re wrong, I’m afraid.’
I sighed.
‘And I wouldn’t bother going to the press if I were you. Beside the fact that none of the Tory sheets’d touch it right now, you don’t have anything.’ His smile said he thought I was extremely dim. ‘Very silly giving away the film like that. Very silly indeed.’
He sipped his orange juice. He reminded me of a headmaster I once had, who would tut at you and shake his head for ages before getting his strap out.
‘I would just like to ask you a few questions,’ I said.
‘As for the police,’ he continued, ‘I happen to know the Boss. And I don’t mean some paltry detective or even a Chief Inspector, I mean the Boss. I don’t really think they’re going to pick me up on the say-so of some failed cop who had a breakdown, do you?’
Lloyd seemed to be enjoying himself. He gave a short laugh, shook his head at my incompetence and took a last drag on his cigarette. There was a certain overconfidence in his gestures, ingrained, I suspected, by years of easing his way nicely through life. I hadn’t heard anything which required a response.
‘I’ve done my homework on you, Mr Rucker. I’m pleased to say that you don’t have anything on me.’
‘Then you don’t have anything to worry about, do you?’ I said. ‘I’m surprised you even came.’
‘I’m not worried. I simply came to tell you that if you suggest anywhere, anywhere, that I am having an affair with anybody, I will not only sue you but you might find problems getting your licence renewed. Is that clear?’ He was a little more serious now.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly, matching his earlier smile. ‘I think so. You’re threatening me. Thank you for being so frank.’ I moved the ashtray he was using towards him. ‘However, let’s not get carried away. If I tell the police about your affair with Charlotte Morgan, they will go and talk to her about it. She admitted it to me, she will to them. You will then be interviewed by certain police officers. The Queen could not prevent this; I know the officers. The crime desks of various papers will find out about this. They will know which case these officers are working on, and will be very interested in the fact that these officers are talking to you. They’ll put two and two together and the answer will be one. Page one. Let me see now; “Whizzkid MP Quizzed in Gay Slasher Case”. That sounds quite tasty, doesn’t it?’
Lloyd was silent, biting his bottom lip. I thought I could detect a hint of grudging admiration in his eye. He shrugged. I finished my mineral water.
‘As for my licence, do what you like. It’s about time I got out of this racket anyway. I don’t like the company.’
I stood up and walked over to the bar, giving him time to think about it. When I got back, this time with a ginger ale, he didn’t look so relaxed.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to the papers. Yet. Or the police. Tell me where you were on the sixth of July, a Friday, in the evening.’
He had thought ahead. As I was speaking he took an electronic organizer from his jacket pocket. He pressed some buttons and then turned the tiny screen round to show me.
‘As you can see, I was out of the country. On a fact-finding trip. Keeping some Home Office morons in order if you must know.’
‘That’s what it says there.’
‘That is what it would say anywhere. Because it happens to be true.’
‘All right,’ I said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the pictures. I tossed it on to the table and watched Lloyd’s face as he picked it up and glanced at it dismissively. His face told me that he had never seen the man before or was a natural liar. I didn’t know which one was more likely.
‘Who’s this?’ he said.
‘You tell me.’
‘I can’t. I have no idea who this man is.’ He put the picture down. I put my finger on it.
‘He’s the man who met your mistress’s husband at Heathrow airport,’ I said. ‘And very probably stuck a broken bottle into him. Several times. Either because that’s the sort of thing he enjoys, or someone paid him to.’
‘Then you’d better get out there and find him, if that is what you are being paid to do, and stop wasting your time on me.’ The veneer on his voice had now completely rubbed off. He leant forward and pointed his finger at my chest. ‘I had nothing to do with this, and you don’t have anything to suggest I do beyond what you thought you saw when, like the grubby little man you obviously are, you were spying on myself and the friend I was trying to comfort in a time of obvious distress for her.’
‘You were being very thorough.’
‘Watch it. I’ll repeat what I told you just so you get it straight. It would be very foolish of you to involve me any further in this business. Very foolish indeed.’
Lloyd finished his spiel and then did something which I don’t think he meant me to see. He glanced, very quickly at the door. The glance was barely perceptible but it was there. Then he focused on me, looking at me like he was the chief whip and I was a backbencher about to abstain. I sat for a second thinking about his little glance. Then I excused myself, saying I would be back in a second, and I walked into the back of the pub towards the toilet.
I walked down the narrow corridor but instead of turning left into the toilet I went straight on and pushed open a fire door leading out of the back of the pub. I was in a small yard with a circular drain in the middle and crates of empty bottles stacked against two walls. I shut the door behind me. I looked around. Unfortunately, the only way out was an alley leading up to Stroud Green Road. I didn’t much want to take it but I had no choice. I walked up it and emerged on to the street as nonchalantly as I could, immediately crossing the road without turning my head. Once on the other side I stepped into a doorway and looked back over at the pub.
A heavily built man in a long, single-breasted blue coat was standing by the door of The Colt, seemingly immersed in the Standard. Maybe he was immersed in it. I thought about waiting for Lloyd, to see if the man said anything to him when he came out but realized that, whoever the man was, he wouldn’t speak to the MP. I thought about waiting around until they both realized I was gone, and then tailing the man in the coat if he went anywhere. No good, he probably knew my car by now. Or he didn’t know anything about me and was waiting for his wife to finish using the toilet. I didn’t know what to do. I certainly didn’t want this man tailing me, if that was his intention. I was goin
g to meet Sharon and I didn’t want her getting involved in anything. Making the decision, I stepped out of the doorway and walked back across the road.
‘Have you got a light?’ I asked the man, having tapped him on the shoulder. He had turned round and was looking at me impassively. Slowly, he nodded.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
The man reached into his coat pocket without taking his eyes off me. A thick moustache bristled above a mouth with no lips. He held up a Zippo, popped it open and struck it. I didn’t move. I didn’t produce a cigarette for him to light either. I don’t smoke. After a second I made a small turn to the left.
‘You see that car,’ I said, pointing towards the Mazda parked on the other side of the road, twenty or so yards down towards Finsbury Park. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it is. And I’m going to get in it and drive it away now.’
The man stared.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am.’
‘So?’
‘So nothing.’ I smiled. ‘Just thought I’d let you know, that’s all.’
The man didn’t say anything. I walked away from him and crossed the road, turning back to look at him. He kept his eyes on me and didn’t move. He hadn’t moved by the time I’d got the engine started either, or pulled away from the kerb. He could tell I was still watching him. I just made an amber light and as I pulled away I saw him in the wing mirror. He folded up his paper, stuck it under his arm and walked into the pub. I made another amber light at Finsbury Park, and headed up the Blackstock Road.
Chapter Eleven
As far as I could tell I wasn’t tailed as I drove back to Clerkenwell. I went home, showered, and then met Sharon at The Falcon on Farringdon Road where we both had the grilled sardines. I still felt strange from the morning, and more than a little edgy from the afternoon, and I had to make a conscious effort to engage with Sharon and shake myself into the evening. I kept drifting in and out of the conversation like a hologram on half power. I couldn’t help thinking about Lloyd, and as we ate I found myself wishing that I hadn’t arranged to go out with Sharon that night. I always found it impossible to enjoy myself when I was in the middle of something important; I just wanted to get out and find something Lloyd wouldn’t be able to smirk at. I told myself it was too late now and not to ruin Sharon’s evening by being sullen with her.
