‘I’m here to do whatever I can.’
‘I urged him to contact the police as soon as we realized Muriel had been taken. He convinced me that would have been a mistake. You agree?’
For all her courtly southern accent and manners, it was clear she believed in coming to the point. I could hardly disagree, with Lashley standing beside me, but maybe she thought she’d be able to gauge the sincerity of my response even so. ‘I’ve always had the highest respect for Mr Lashley’s judgement. I’m sure what he’s doing is for the best.’
‘Me too.’ She smiled stiffly. ‘But it’s a trial for all of us. And for Muriel … well, I don’t like to think about what she’s going through.’
‘It won’t be for much longer,’ said Lashley. ‘I’m very close to an agreement with these people.’
‘People? I’m not sure they qualify for the description.’
‘Neither am I. But I can’t afford to let them know that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to.’
There was a trace of exasperation in Lashley’s words. He headed for Francis’s old study, now his, like a man facing up to a painful duty. He’d shouldered the responsibility for freeing Muriel. It was probably the heaviest responsibility he’d ever shouldered. And he couldn’t shirk it.
‘His self-control is remarkable,’ said Jacqueline after he’d gone. ‘I couldn’t have handled the pressure the way he has.’
‘You must have handled a good deal just by being here and knowing what’s going on.’
‘I’ve tried to give Greville as much support as I can. It’s little enough, though. He carries all the worry and the stress inside him. He’s gone to the study now because this is often the time they call. A deal is close, he tells me. The end’s in sight. I surely hope so.’
‘How’s Adam coping?’
‘You’re acquainted with the young man?’
‘Barely.’
‘Well, he’s another worry for his father. Out a lot, especially late at night. Drinking too much. Probably on drugs as well. He won’t …’ She sighed. ‘It’s not for me to say. It’s hard for him, I know, but …’
‘He’s very young.’
‘My brother was risking his life in Vietnam at Adam’s age. Risking it … and losing it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Lame as the sentiment was, it was all I could offer.
‘John’s death shortened my mother’s life and my father’s never properly recovered from it either. Such a thing does lasting damage. You can’t just … shrug it off. I know that from personal experience. So, I’m praying this turns out well, Jonathan. Literally praying. Every night. Because if it doesn’t …’
She said no more. She didn’t need to. Her silence said it all.
TWENTY-SIX
THE VILLA ORCHIS WAS a sombre, anxious place in Muriel Lashley’s absence. The changes she’d made to the furnishings and decorations of Luisa’s days only emphasized, as her husband freely admitted, that it was much more her home from home than his. She’d always spent more time there than he had, carefully imprinting on it her very English sensibility. Luisa would have objected that there were too many cushions and far too many ornaments. And I’d have agreed with her. That, however, was as Muriel wanted it. I scarcely knew her, though the little I knew I didn’t like, which I suspected was just how she felt about me. But her plight was an awful one. I didn’t need to work hard at wanting to rescue her from it.
After dinner, and Patrizia’s departure, Lashley asked me to step into his study for a word – a conferral, in effect, from which Jacqueline was uncomplainingly omitted. Lashley was old school. This was a man’s job. And we were the men to do it.
The room had been altered less than most of the others. It was much as Francis had left it, preserved by Luisa in his memory, I assumed. Lashley, for whom the environments he lived and worked in always seemed matters of little importance, had simply colonized it for his purposes.
The mineral cabinet had gone, though, donated to a museum, maybe. In its place stood a safe, in which, Lashley told me, the money to buy Muriel’s freedom was stored in readiness. ‘In Swiss francs, Jonathan,’ he said. ‘The Camorra’s currency of choice. They phoned earlier,’ he revealed. ‘They’re beginning to sound almost reasonable. We’ll have a deal soon. Twenty-four hours. Forty-eight at most.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Then you’ll have to do your bit, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m ready for that.’
‘Muriel’s always been down on you, as you know. She blames you to some degree for Oliver’s death. Unreasonably, of course, but there it is. Rest assured I shall point out to her that you’re more use to me in an emergency – and to her – than the Honourable Roger could ever be.’
‘Horses for courses.’
Lashley chuckled grimly. ‘You’re a realist, like me. We do what has to be done. We get results. And a result is what we need.’ He opened a drawer of the desk and took out an envelope, stamped and franked, with his name and address written on it in large capitals. He handed it to me. ‘Take a look,’ he said softly.
Inside was a photograph: the photograph. Muriel Lashley, smartly dressed, hair coiffured from her visit to the salon, stared grimly at the camera, her face drawn, eyes hollow, fear – and, yes, anger – etched in her gaze; in front of her, clutched prominently in both hands, was the Neapolitan daily, Il Mattino.
The print wasn’t sharp enough for me to read the date, but from the same drawer Lashley took a copy of the previous Friday’s edition. Its front page matched the one in the photograph. ‘I was instructed to buy it,’ he explained. ‘So there could be no doubt.’
‘I’m really sorry this has happened, sir.’
‘Thank you. I know you are. But don’t worry.’ He squeezed my shoulder. ‘You and I are going to make it unhappen.’
The bedroom I’d been allocated was the same room I’d been given fifteen years before. Lashley had no way of knowing that and Patrizia had probably forgotten. It was just another coincidence, a minor one at that. But I could have done without it. Beyond the calamity I was there to help Lashley deal with were ghosts of memories I had no wish to meet.
Sleep proved elusive, though whether because of those ghosts or straightforward jet lag I couldn’t have said. I abandoned the struggle after a couple of hours and went downstairs to make myself a hot drink.
So it was that I alone of the household was still up when Adam reeled home from wherever he’d spent the evening and a large chunk of the night. It was immediately obvious he was drunk and not hard to guess he was half stoned as well. My presence in the kitchen was no great surprise to him. He’d been told I was coming – and why. He was ready for me. And I was ready for him.
‘Waiting up for me, Kellaway?’ he slurred, taking a puff on what smelt like a reefer. ‘Didn’t know tucking the son and heir up in bed was part of your contract. But I guess your contract covers … whatever Daddy says it covers.’
He seemed to be even taller than I remembered. Fatter too. His round, puffy face was flushed, his Che Guevara T-shirt stained with red wine. He swayed as he squinted at me, forcing his eyes to focus. I reminded myself that hostility and excess were probably his way of coping with his fears about what might happen to his mother. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I asked. ‘I’ve just made some.’
‘Nah. Not my idea of a nightcap.’ He pulled open a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy that Patrizia probably kept for cooking. ‘This is more like it.’ He found a glass and poured himself an unhealthily large slug.
‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’
The question was a red rag to a bull. ‘I’ve had enough of being cooped up here. And pretty soon I’ll have had enough of you. You’ve come for the pay-off, right? You’re the bag man?’
‘Sort of.’
‘So how much is in the bag? I reckon I’ve a right to be told. It’s coming out of my inheritance, after all.’
‘Your inheritance?’
/> ‘Money Daddy’s put away over the years. Intended for me. Not intended for a bunch of Neapolitan low-lifes.’
Drunk as he was, there seemed no doubt he genuinely resented the family’s savings being raided to buy Muriel’s freedom. His selfishness was breathtaking. ‘We’re talking about your mother’s life, Adam,’ I reminded him.
‘What’s happened to her isn’t my fault.’
‘I never said it was.’
‘But I’m the one who has to pay for it.’
‘Your father’s the one who’s paying.’
‘You still haven’t told me how much.’ He gulped down most of the brandy in one swallow. His eyes bulged. He shook his head like a dog and grinned inanely at me. ‘Ah … Perhaps you don’t know. Daddy keeping you in the dark, is he? Like a fucking mushroom. When does the next bucketload of shit land on your head, hey?’
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ It was clearly pointless talking to him in his present condition, tempted though I was to say what I thought of him. I picked up my tea and headed for the door. He grabbed my elbow to stop me.
‘You should be nice to me, Kellaway. Nicey nice. I’ll be in charge of the business one day. Some bootlicking now might stand you in good stead later.’
I prised myself free of his grip. ‘Goodnight, Adam,’ I said levelly.
He said nothing. But I felt the force of his glare, trained somewhere between my shoulder blades, all the way out of the room.
I was up early next morning, thanks only to my alarm clock. There was a moment of shock such as I’d experienced before, a moment when I remembered I was back on Capri. And the Wren family were back in my life, the Lashley branch of it, anyway. Greville Lashley had treated me well over the years and I wasn’t going to let him down. Set against that, the fact that his son was an egotistical jerk didn’t count for much. I couldn’t allow it to.
My intention was to catch the mysterious Mr Thompson at his hotel before he headed out somewhere for the day. The Gabbiano was a small, whitewashed establishment at the eastern end of Capri town. The receptionist I encountered understood enough English to direct me to the small courtyard garden at the rear, where Signor Thompson was enjoying his prima colazione.
The breakfasters comprised a German-speaking couple and one bald, paunchy, jowly old Brit stationed at a pink-parasoled table with tea, cornflakes and the only English-language newspaper available to him, the International Herald Tribune. He was smoking a pipe and this, together with his severely clipped moustache and his baggy-shirt-and-trouser concept of hot-weather gear, gave him the look of someone stuck firmly in the 1950s.
‘Mr Thompson?’
He looked up at me suspiciously. ‘I’m Fred Thompson, yes. Do I know you?’ As Lashley had said, there was an undertow of cockney in his voice.
‘No. Let me introduce myself. I work for Greville Lashley. My name’s Jonathan Kellaway.’
Something I can only call a tremor flitted across Thompson’s face: a brief narrowing of the gaze, a twitch of surprise, a frown of disbelief. The effect was disquieting, as if he did know me, or knew of me, but hadn’t expected to meet me in such a setting. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Kellaway?’
‘Mind if I sit down?’
‘Be my guest.’
I sat down opposite him. ‘Sorry to interrupt your breakfast. I didn’t want to miss you.’
He took a puff at his pipe. ‘What sort of thing does Mr Lashley employ you to do?’
‘This and that. I gather you’ve been asking after Mrs Lashley.’
‘I’ve had my ear to the ground, yes. I expected her to be here, see. We had an appointment.’
‘Concerning what?’
‘No offence intended, but that concerns something between me and her that’s none of your business.’
‘And what’s your business, Mr Thompson?’
‘Oh, I’m retired. Drawing my hard-earned pension.’
‘So, you’re here on holiday, are you?’
‘Not exactly. I still keep my hand in. And Mrs Lashley …’ He broke off and grinned at me. ‘It’s lucky you dropped in, actually. Saves me trudging over to the villa. I was planning to, see. This very morning, as it happens.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to give Lashley a last chance to square with me … before I go to the police.’
‘The police?’
‘What else can I do? Mrs Lashley goes missing when she’s asked me to come all this way to discuss an urgent matter. Mr Lashley won’t tell me where she is. The word among the tradesfolk is she’s gone to look after her sick aunt in Cornwall. But the aunt isn’t sick and thinks her niece hasn’t left Capri. Which is where Mrs Lashley’s daughter also thinks she is. But she isn’t. Apparently. Misterioso, as the locals would say.’
‘Mr Lashley’s not obliged to explain his wife’s comings and goings to you.’
‘That he isn’t.’ Another grin. ‘The police might be a different matter, though.’
‘They’ll tell you to go away and stop wasting their time.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘You’ll certainly have to disclose the nature of your business with Mrs Lashley to them.’
‘And I will.’
‘So why not disclose it to me first … and avoid making yourself look an idiot?’
‘That’s what you think I’ll look, is it?’
‘Mr Lashley knows nothing of your “appointment” with his wife.’
‘Not unusual in my line.’
It seemed to me that could mean only one thing. ‘Are you a private detective?’
‘Confidential inquiries agent is what I used to call myself, Mr Kellaway. Retired, like I told you. But still on call … for a few trusted clients.’
A private detective, by any other name. Thompson had admitted it. And the significance of his admission was like the disappearance of the ground beneath my feet. Suddenly, I remembered Terry’s description of the man who’d been asking questions about me at the Builders’ Arms in Walworth back in the summer of 1969. ‘Your average middle-aged square. Not tall, not short. Not fat, not thin. Smoked a pipe. Fussy little ’tache. Never took his hat off, so he might’ve been bald … or he mightn’t have been.’ It was him, fifteen years older, fatter and balder. It was Fred Thompson, confidential inquiries agent. There wasn’t a doubt of it in my mind.
‘Are you all right, Mr Kellaway? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘Are you saying … you’ve done some work for Mrs Lashley in the past?’
‘I have, yes.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘The confidential sort.’
‘Following people? Checking up on them?’
‘Confidential means confidential.’
‘When did you first work for her?’
‘She’s my client, Mr Kellaway. You aren’t.’
‘Fifteen years ago? Or more?’
‘Privileged information, I’m afraid.’ His smile was more of a smirk now. He was enjoying himself. At my expense. ‘Where’s Mrs Lashley? That’s all I want to know: where she is and how she is. I’m worried about her, see.’
Lashley had instructed me to buy Thompson off if I had to. Perhaps it was what the fellow was angling for. Perhaps he’d tell me everything I wanted to know if the money was right. Distasteful as it was, it had to be attempted. ‘You’ll have incurred some expenses coming all this way, Mr Thompson. And no doubt you have a standard daily fee. Mr Lashley would be—’
‘Don’t say it, Mr Kellaway. You’ll embarrass me. And yourself. This is what I’ll do for you. For your boss, that is. I’ll give him twenty-four hours. Meet me in the Piazzetta at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll be at one of the café tables. You can tell me then where Mrs Lashley is and why she isn’t here. I’ll decide what to do about it. I may still go to the police. We’ll have to see. It depends. What doesn’t depend is this. Stand me up or feed me a load of bull and I’ll go s
traight to the station and make a full report. Fair enough?’
I hurried back to the Villa Orchis, angered as well as humiliated. I’d been comprehensively outmanoeuvred. To make matters worse, I felt horribly certain Thompson knew more about me than he was telling. The same applied to Lashley, of course. I had nothing but bad news for him.
Jacqueline was breakfasting on the terrace. She invited me to join her. But I had to see Lashley without delay.
‘He’s in his study, working,’ she told me. ‘He has business papers faxed to him daily.’
‘Of course.’ He would have. He was a man who liked to stay in touch. ‘I’ll have to interrupt, though.’
‘Adam hasn’t surfaced yet.’
‘No?’
‘Did you speak to him last night? I’m a light sleeper and he woke me coming in. I thought I heard him talking to someone downstairs.’
‘That was me.’ I grimaced. ‘Maybe he’s friendlier when he’s sober.’
‘Not so you’d notice. Just quieter.’ She smiled at me sympathetically. ‘But we must make allowances.’
I smiled ruefully back. ‘That we must.’
Lashley too would have to make allowances. This he rapidly appreciated when I told him how my encounter with Thompson had gone: just about as badly as it could have.
‘Damn the fellow,’ he said when I’d finished, stubbing out one cigarette in Francis’s old onyx ashtray and lighting another. ‘What could Muriel have been thinking of?’
‘As to that, sir, I wondered if you had any idea.’ I’d omitted to mention my suspicion that Thompson had been on my tail in London fifteen years before. If he really had been working for Muriel then, Lashley surely had to know.
‘I might have, Jonathan. When Vivien went up to Cambridge, Muriel was worried about how she’d cope. Understandably so, in the circumstances. I needn’t remind you of the overdose she took after Oliver’s death. Anyway, Muriel convinced herself Vivien was likely to “fall in with the wrong set”, as she put it. The papers were full of scare stories about drugs and God knows what. Muriel insisted we should … well, check up on her. Make sure everything was as … stable … as she assured us it was. Vivien was seeing a psychotherapist, but she was quite capable of pulling the wool over his eyes. Muriel had just lost her son. She was determined to do whatever she could to protect her daughter. I let her have her way, rather against my better judgement, to be honest. But CCC’s takeover of Wren’s was making a lot of demands on my attention at the time. She consulted a detective agency in Plymouth. They had some kind of reciprocal arrangement with an agency in London. An operative was detailed to carry out … discreet monitoring of Vivien’s activities … and associations.’
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