Mirror Mirror: A shatteringly powerful page-turner

by Nick Louth

  ‘Awful, naturally,’ she responded as she tried to make a way through a gathering pack of reporters. By the time Virgil reached her side Mira was hemmed in, and being jostled by cameramen, sound booms and photographers.

  Another question was hurled from the back: ‘Mira, some bloggers claim you were involved in arranging this attack. What do you have to say?’

  ‘How can you say such a thing?’ Mira said, showing the huge bunch of flowers Stardust had supplied her with. ‘I don’t believe in retaliation.’ By this time Virgil was sliding his body between Mira and the press, easing her way to the door. But the dreaded follow-up question emerged: ‘Mira, retaliation for what?’

  The only reply was the bang of double doors as Mira stepped into the safety of the clinic. Once Virgil was confident the hospital security staff had secured the door, he turned to watch her receding down the long corridor, accompanied by a nurse. Even in a conservative raincoat, Mira’s walk was mesmerising: Unhurried, elegant, even arrogant. It was hard for him to turn away.

  Five minutes later Mira phoned Virgil from inside the hospital. ‘He won’t speak to me. I’m coming out.’

  Virgil hesitated before saying: ‘Remember what Jonesy said. It might not look good, coming out immediately, with the press all over.’

  Mira gave a piercing screech of frustration. ‘All right,’ she yelled, ‘I’ll walk the bloody corridor for twenty minutes. Jesus Christ, who’s the victim here?’ There was a sharp crack and the phone went dead. Virgil shook his head and thought about the question.

  When Mira finally emerged half an hour later, she was tight-lipped, her face closed. Virgil steered her through the gaggle of reporters to the waiting car. Once inside and safely away from the scene, Virgil watched her face in the rearview mirror. She looked up and caught his eye. ‘I broke my phone when I threw it,’ she said, showing him the cracked screen. ‘I got told off by a nurse for making a noise. Just like I was a child.’

  ‘It happens,’ Virgil said. ‘Where to now?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, leaning forward with a mischievous look on her face. ‘I need to go home and change out of this matronly garb. Then I want you to drive me into the City. I’ve got a lunch date.’

  * * *

  Virgil dropped Mira outside some anonymous office block near the Baltic Exchange in the City, and despite her promising to call him once she knew where she was having lunch, she had turned off her phone. He’d taken the car to an underground car park and walked out onto the street to be sure he could get a signal if she did call back. He called Thad and expressed his misgivings.

  ‘I can’t protect her if she won’t let me know where she is,’ Virgil said.

  Thad laughed. ‘You can’t live her life for her. She’s twenty-three and probably feels like she’s trying to escape her parents all over again. So who is this guy she’s seeing?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about him except his name is Ram Dipani. He’s part of a billionaire family of Indian shipbreakers.’

  ‘Okay, Virgil. Do your best.’

  Virgil waited four agonising hours for Mira to ring. When she did it was from an address in the West End. She and Ram had taken a taxi to some quiet restaurant that he knew would be away from prying eyes. Virgil eventually found the Soho side street and as he double-parked outside, she and Ram emerged, sharing a large umbrella. The Indian was film-star handsome, with a stylish jacket and designer stubble. Virgil emerged to open the door, and they both slid inside. Ram insisted on shaking Virgil’s hand. ‘Take care of this precious lady,’ he said.

  ‘That’s my job and I’m doing it as well as I can.’

  ‘Virgil would like to be my rock, Princess Diana style, but he’s more like my favourite patch of gravel,’ laughed Mira. ‘Do you know, when I first met him, I thought he’d been named after the Greek hero, but I was wrong, wasn’t I Virgil?’

  ‘Yes. My mum named me after a character in Thunderbirds,’ Virgil said.

  It meant nothing to Ram, and he and Mira had to explain what the cult science fiction series was all about. Ram asked to be dropped off at his office, and during the half hour journey Virgil couldn’t help noticing the bubbling conversation and laughter in the back. Ram had missed a meeting, but he clearly couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘This is me,’ Ram said, as Virgil drove along Leadenhall Street. Virgil pulled over, and his eyes couldn’t help straying to the mirror, where he caught Ram’s rather shy kiss on Mira’s cheek. The joyful atmosphere was quite infectious and he felt very pleased for her, seeing her beaming with happiness.

  ‘Seems like a nice guy,’ Virgil ventured.

  ‘Oh Virgil, he’s wonderful,’ Mira said. ‘So gracious, so attentive and a great listener.’

  ‘I did read somewhere that the last true English gentleman would be an Indian,’ Virgil said.

  Mira asked Virgil to drive her home to pick up some fresh clothes, and as soon as he crossed London Bridge, she was on the phone, gushing to her friends about her first date with Ram Dipani. Suddenly she stopped talking and gasped. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to a great spray of red paint along the parapet of the bridge: Kill the Bitch. In the centre of the stylised B were two almond-shaped green eyes.

  ‘Don’t take any notice,’ said Virgil. ‘Just some idiot with a spray can.’

  Mira’s mood deflated immediately, and when they saw a second graffito, this time on the metal sides of a railway viaduct, she suddenly looked like she was about to cry. ‘Virgil, don’t they know? It wasn’t me. It really wasn’t me!’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Virgil said. ‘The joys of celebrity, eh?’

  For the first time for four days, there seemed to be no journalists hanging around Mira’s apartment block. He drove into the underground secure car park, perhaps her greatest protection against being buttonholed, and went with her in the card-operated lift to her flat. She looked relieved to be back.

  ‘Home at last, Virgil,’ she said, smiling at him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Virgil as the lift door opened onto her floor. ‘I’ll say goodbye now. Sweet dreams. See you tomorrow at…’

  She turned to see what he was looking at. The door to her flat and the adjacent black marble panel had been sprayed in bright red, foot-high letters: Be careful, Mira.

  Chapter Twenty

  NINETEEN DAYS

  Virgil was supposed to be cooking a meal for Kelly that evening to inaugurate his new expensive kitchen, but instead of shopping for food, he’d sat with Mira for two hours in the early evening while she faffed around in her apartment, spending half the time texting, and the rest trying to work out what clothes to take to Baroness Earl’s apartment. Given that it was an open-ended stay, Virgil imagined there could be any amount of stuff required.

  ‘Thad told me that you don’t want to go to any of the service apartments Stardust has offered, or the hotels,’ Virgil said.

  ‘Virgil, I don’t like anonymous places. You can only exist there, not live. Besides they get really spooky when you are on your own. After what happened in Copenhagen I don’t trust hotels to keep my presence a secret. There’s always someone in the pay of the newspapers. At least staying with friends there will be people I can trust. No one knows where I’ll be except you, Thad and Natasha.’

  Eventually, Virgil delivered Mira and her three bulging suitcases to a swanky address in St John’s Wood, north of the river. Natasha came down to meet them outside the imposing mansion block, so after carrying the luggage in, he left them to it. His thoughts turned to what might now be a high-pressure test of his cooking skills. It was after six, and the Balham market stalls he’d wanted to visit were long closed, so he picked up some fresh penne, mushrooms and cream cheese from the deli. The route home was different from usual, and he noticed even more anti-Mira graffiti. Kill the Bitch was prominent on Balham railway bridge, and on the brick beneath, dozens of stencilled poster-size images had green eyes with a cross through them. A new inventive cruelty.

  * * *

 
Kelly arrived half an hour late, a fat folder of work still in her arms as he opened the door. ‘Sorry, running a bit behind, didn’t get time to buy any wine.’

  ‘You’re here, that’s all that matters.’ Virgil pulled her into his arms, kicked the door shut and kissed her fiercely until her documents slid, sheet by surrendering sheet, from her arms and onto the floor. He lifted her further, and she squealed as her shoes dropped off. He carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. ‘We’ve got a bit of time before dinner,’ Virgil murmured, and pulled his shirt over his head.

  Two hours later, the pasta still uncooked, Virgil awoke in a sensuous haze at the loss of Kelly’s warmth. He propped himself up on a pillow to watch her. Naked but for black and now laddered hold-ups she was leaning away from him over the desk, holding a sheaf of documents. Her copper hair, corkscrewing over her shoulders, was burnished to gold in the light of the single desk lamp.

  ‘Hey, no work now,’ Virgil said.

  ‘It’s yours, not mine,’ she said, turning back to him, holding Wōdan’s latest card. ‘I love this drawing of Mira,’ she said.

  ‘It’s fantastic, really,’ Virgil said. The psychiatric patient had really captured something about her, the eyes which were both bewitching but inscrutable, giving no clue to what she was thinking.

  ‘That newspaper she’s holding, it’s just perfect. He’s even managed to include the latest news, kind of,’ Kelly said. ‘It says Lawrence Wall was murdered.’

  ‘What?’ Virgil leaped out of bed. ‘Where does it say that?’ He took the card and put it under the light.

  ‘Here. You have to hold it edgeways on to read it, to foreshorten the letters.’ Kelly held up the card, folded edge to her nose, then handed it to Virgil. It was true. Edgeways on, the almost microscopic text sprang to life:

  Lawrence Wall murdered

  Then the subheading:

  Football ace knifed in Friday night Manchester nightclub attack.

  Virgil’s jaw dropped.

  ‘That is so clever,’ said Kelly. ‘How did he write so incredibly small?’

  ‘No idea. But think about it,’ Virgil said. ‘The envelope was postmarked, lets see, five days before Lawrence Wall was attacked. He wasn’t reacting to the news, he was anticipating it. He expected it. The location and the time, everything except the result was right…’

  ‘But he couldn’t have done it. He’s in Broadmoor.’

  ‘Not personally. But he’s obviously got friends.’

  Kelly’s hands clasped her face. ‘He was boasting about it. To Mira. But why?’

  * * *

  Virgil knew that keeping Mira safe had to start with making the apartment fully secure. The graffito by her door had worried her enough to keep her away. Even though there was nothing to indicate it was more than a prank, the fact that someone had got so close was a concern. Virgil had asked to see the CCTV coverage for the corridor outside Mira’s door, but was astounded to be told that there was none, it was merely a dummy housing. Stefan Kados was apologetic, but explained that this was normal. ‘Most residents and owners are foreign nationals, and often very wealthy,’ he said. ‘They jealously guard their privacy and many don’t want there to be any record of who their friends and associates are. We are confident that with cameras covering the lobby, the entryways to the lifts on the ground floor and the car park, we are fully secure.’

  ‘Really? What about the intruder in the utility control room?’

  ‘We don’t really know there was anyone there, do we?’ Kados replied. ‘The police were happy with the arrangements we have put in place. That room is now kept locked.’

  Virgil didn’t respond for a moment, so Kados – still in apology mode – said: ‘If you would like to review the lobby and entrance images for the night in question, we are happy to grant permission.’

  ‘No thanks. I don’t know who I’m looking for, or when they arrived. If they were staying in another apartment, or up in the utility room, it could be a different day.’ Virgil then asked that a camera be installed in the dummy housing on Mira’s floor, but was told it might take several weeks because it would need the permission of the owner of the neighbouring apartment, who lived in Singapore.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. Don’t lock the utility control room door. Let me install a wireless camera up there. I can get one with a movement sensor, connected to my phone. If our intruder comes back, I’ll know immediately.’

  * * *

  SEVENTEEN DAYS

  It was a full five days after the attack on Lawrence before the police called to arrange an interview with Mira. They were happy to visit Stardust Brands’ offices, so Jonesy had prepared the full works. The biggest conference room, with floor-to-ceiling images of Mira in place. They had been told that no lawyer would be required, but arranged for one anyway. Jazam Shah was already sitting with Virgil Bliss and Jonesy on soft low seats around a small glass coffee table when reception buzzed to say that Detective Inspector Colin Croucher and Detective Sergeant Gordon Highfield of Greater Manchester Police had arrived, a good ten minutes early. Virgil went to fetch them, wondering just how much rivalry there had been to get this interview. They were like two boys in a sweetshop, eyes everywhere at the svelte young women of Stardust. Croucher had an accountant’s bearing but a worse suit; grey, baggy and overlong in the sleeves. His face was crumpled in an avuncular middle-aged way, and his lips were thin but mobile. Highfield was more street smart. Stocky, with a trendy haircut, fashionably full beard and a couple of piercings. Croucher, like Virgil before him, couldn’t get the hang of the reclined seat style, and perched on the edge like a schoolboy waiting to see the headmaster.

  Virgil introduced himself as Mira’s security chief, and brought them through. He sat them at the small table, and made the introductions. Kelly came in to get them coffee, and Virgil noticed how they both stared down the front of her blouse and lingered over her legs. Just wait until you see Mira.

  ‘I take it Miss Roskova is here?’ Croucher began.

  ‘Of course,’ Jonesy said. ‘Here she is now.’

  A door opened at the far end of the room, behind where Croucher and Highfield had been seated. They looked over their shoulders, and saw Mira call a welcome. She was wearing a saffron-coloured button-up dress and blue court shoes, and gave them the full glory of twenty feet of catwalk approach. Jonesy and Virgil stood up, leaving the detectives in an undignified scramble to match them. Virgil watched closely. They were transfixed. She shook hands with them, even grasping Croucher’s wrist with her other hand as Jonesy had suggested. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about this ghastly attack on Lawrence, so I’m really glad you came here to see if there is anything I can do.’

  ‘Well, this is only a routine inquiry at the moment…’

  ‘And you’d just like me to answer a few questions? Of course.’

  Jonesy had earlier placed a high upright chair a few feet back from the coffee table, so the cops would be looking up to her. Mira sat down, crossed her legs and smoothed the dress.

  ‘We hadn’t intended to tape this interview,’ Croucher said. ‘But as I see Mr Shah is, then we will have too also.’ He turned to Highfield, who laid on the table a much larger and more old-fashioned machine than Shah’s.

  ‘So can I ask you, Miss Roskova, how long you have known Lawrence Wall?’

  ‘Not quite seven months.’

  ‘And how did you meet?’

  ‘A TV awards dinner at the Carlton…’

  ‘Was that for the zombie programme?’ Highfield asked.

  ‘Yes. Village of the Dead. Did you see it?’

  ‘Of course,’ he smirked. ‘Everyone’s seen it. It was brill.’ To Virgil, Highfield already looked smitten.

  ‘And I believe you have now broken up, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mira laughed. ‘Unfortunately, I think everyone in the country has read about it. Even my personal letter to him.’

  ‘Well, indeed,’ Croucher said. ‘But you c
an’t take everything you read in the papers on face value.’ He looked around the table for support.

  ‘That’s certainly true,’ Jonesy said. ‘It’s half my job keeping on top of that nonsense.’

  ‘Would you say your relationship with Mr Wall was harmonious?’ Croucher asked.

  Mira suppressed a laugh. ‘No, Inspector. Lawrence Wall is an elemental force of nature, as anyone who watches him play can tell you. I admired him, and like many women I found him attractive. But Lawrence isn’t a man who meets anyone halfway. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Makes perfect sense to me,’ Highfield said under his breath, until silenced by a look from his senior colleague.

  ‘Now, we have spoken to Mr Wall about the attack, as you would expect, and he is firmly of the opinion that you might have had something to do with it.’

  Mira’s gaze hardened, and as she shifted position, the tip of her shoe firmly pointed towards the inspector. ‘I’m really sorry that he seems to be so hurt by our break-up that he has to resort to false accusations.’

  ‘So, to be clear you deny it?’

  ‘Yes, I absolutely deny it.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Shah said, ‘if you are accusing my client of any complicity in this affair, I will have to remind you that she should be formally arrested.’

  ‘I’m not accusing her,’ Croucher said. ‘I’m asking her response to an accusation made by her ex-partner.’

  ‘Look, he wasn’t my partner,’ Mira interjected. ‘He was a boyfriend, and not a particularly serious one. Lawrence’s trouble is that he judges people by his own standards. If he is slighted he gets even, whatever the cost. He assumes everyone does the same. I would never lower myself to that level.’ A gentle hand movement tossed the idea aside. Virgil was impressed by the performance. Vulnerability, dignified outrage, the moral high ground. It was all there.

  ‘So were you slighted by him?’

  She paused. ‘He didn’t treat me very well, I think it’s fair to say.’

  ‘He manhandled you once, didn’t he? He did say that might be a motive.’