Femme Fatale

by Dominic Piper

  Then I see Charity Box Challenge. I’d almost forgotten about that. That’s the charity that Jamie Baldwin did some work for. He and Paige met at one of their events. This lodge has been paying forty pounds a month to this charity for a little over two years. Was it through this contact that they managed to get hold of Jamie’s home address? It wouldn’t necessarily be through the boxing charity, of course. They managed to find Rikki’s address easily enough. Or did someone torture it out of him? Did Mr X or someone else see Paige at the Charity Box event? It was just over a week after the third Café Royal gig and there would have been interest in Paige by then.

  Caroline moves closer to me so that our thighs are pressed together. She’s almost sitting on my seat.

  ‘Some coincidence, huh?’ she says. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘Fly a Kite seems to be favoured, at least financially. There could be many reasons for that. The money could be coming from another source. There may be a finite time that each charity is supported; I don’t know how it all works. But the fact that they get anything at all from this lodge connects Footitt with Fly a Kite and connects him with the Café Royal and connects him with Paige and connects him with Rikki. He’s already connected to Jamie Baldwin, as we know.’

  ‘Is Footitt Mr X?

  ‘No. When Tansil and Gable assaulted Jamie, they did it in his flat and called an ambulance from there. He lives in Wandsworth. The Chelsea and Westminster would have been the nearest hospital with an A&E department. It occurred to me earlier that if Jamie had lived somewhere else, he would have more than likely been taken to a different hospital.’

  ‘Where they’d have had another one of their guys waiting? Ready to put the squeeze on? Ready to make sure everything was going to plan?’

  ‘Quite possible.’

  ‘This is beginning to look like some pretty well organised shit, Mr Beckett, if you pardon my language. Would you mind if I unbuttoned my blouse? I’m still rather warm.’

  ‘I’m not sure, Miss Chow. Do you not think your behaviour is getting a little reckless?’

  ‘Now I feel ashamed.’

  ‘Unbutton it then, if you must.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Beckett, for your understanding. But I must tell you; the shame I am feeling is making me feel a little…unsettled.’

  There are only four buttons to undo. She takes it very slowly. It’s starting to get to me now and she knows it; I can tell by her sly little glances in my direction.

  ‘You like my posture?’ she says, slipping out of the rôle play for a moment. ‘I am very straight-backed, I think. Just like a real secretary. Is that it? Is that the only reason you think Footitt isn’t Mr X?’

  ‘No it isn’t. It just doesn’t feel right that it’s him. I think we’re looking for someone with an obsession with Paige. It’s almost like a romantic obsession. Someone who sends her champagne and fur coats and works of art. Someone who moves heaven and earth to make sure that she’s unsullied by relationships with other men. Someone who has trusted personnel at the ready to make sure it doesn’t happen for her.’

  ‘And someone who can’t or won’t approach her in real life.’

  ‘Maybe. When I followed Footitt to Yeoman’s Row the other night, he stopped off to pick up some rough trade. One male, one female. He drove them to Regent’s Park. The guy went down on him while he repeatedly slapped and punched the girl.’

  ‘Shit. That’s some suave devil.’

  ‘It’s possible it is him, of course, but I can’t quite square that type of behaviour with the Paige obsession. I could be mistaken, but I don’t think I am.’

  ‘That Footitt guy hates women, Mr X loves them. He puts them on a pedestal,’ says Caroline, nodding her head affirmatively at her theory.

  ‘Anything’s possible here. Let’s take a look at this other file.’

  ‘I’m just going to take this blouse off. Just for a few minutes so I can cool down.’

  She gets up. The blouse is removed and draped over the back of her seat. She pulls the bra straps off her shoulders and sits down again, straight-backed as before. I catch her grinning as she sees where my eyes are going.

  Taking a deep breath, I click on ‘Brethren 2068’. The 2068 is a little mystifying, but then I realise that it’s presumably the number of the lodge as opposed to some notable masonic date in the future.

  It’s a list of names with dates of birth next to them. There are no headings, addresses or occupations. The names are bunched into groups. Sometimes the gaps in between these groups are wider than others. I take this to be indicative of some sort of categorisation or pecking order.

  At the top of the first page is Viscount Ombersley. Is he the boss man of this lodge? The Sublime Commander of the Sun, or whatever they call themselves? I’ve never heard of him, though I may have to check him out in more detail later on. Caroline points at his name.

  ‘Is that the Mr Big?’

  ‘Hard to say. He might be a token peer. They like having someone connected to nobility or royalty at the top. Bestows gravity and social cred. He may not involve himself in their day-to-day affairs. They pride themselves on their egalitarianism, but you’re unlikely to get an aristocrat making the tea, so to speak.’

  As I scroll down the list I recognise the names of seven serving Members of Parliament who are actually in the current government and another three who are not. I also recognise six so-called captains of industry, two television presenters, a comedian, a high court judge, a former high-up MI5 officer, one minor royal, a couple of top cops and three senior churchmen, one of them an archbishop.

  Most of the names, however, mean nothing to me. It’s when I get to the fourth block of names that I find Lawrence Tansil, his forename spelt slightly differently from the report in The Elstree Enquirer. So he’s a freemason, too. Ex-police. No surprise.

  ‘Tansil’s on here.’

  Caroline snorts. ‘They have them in HK, you know? British freemasonry lodges. Set up by the ex-pats a long, long time ago. All the cops join. It’s how they get on. Of course, we’ve infiltrated them as well. People like Jiang are members, if you can imagine that. Huge waste of time. Ready-made mythology. All bullshit. Just add water. Real men wouldn’t bother. If you want to give to charity that badly, write out a cheque, yeah?’

  ‘They turned you down, did they?’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah.’

  There are over two hundred and fifty names on this list. I try to visualise the lodge interior and wonder how they cram them all in whenever there’s a full meeting. Maybe they do it in shifts. Maybe the late-night visit Footitt made was a typical thing that happened. Maybe you can pop in for a fix of Supreme Being Worship 24/7, as if it was an all-night grocery store where the customers wore aprons and rolled their trouser legs up instead of buying cigarette papers and bread.

  It’s not long before I find Mark Gable’s name and also that of Martyn Ricketts, famed criminal and briber of senior policemen. That’s quite a shock. Did Tansil and Ricketts arrange their crooked business at a masonic meeting? Is this where they met? I’d read about it, but it’s still disquieting to see that it actually happens.

  Barnaby Footitt is almost at the end of the list. In normal society, a hospital consultant might be seen as being a little bit superior to an armed robber, but this plainly isn’t the real world we’re dealing with here.

  There’s no sign of Declan Sharpe or Henry Parsons, the Olympic doping fixer, but there, three up from the bottom, is Thomas Wade, Reception Supervisor at Frampton House, Rikki’s ritzy block in Ebury Street SW1.

  That’s it. That means it was almost certainly Tansil and associates who were responsible for getting that girl into Rikki’s flat and murdering her. I wonder how Jiang Weisheng got on with disposing of her body. I wonder who she was.

  ‘I think I’m gonna take this skirt off now. It really is so hot in here.’

  I have to agree.

  35

  A FACE MADE FOR PUNCHING

  By the time that Car
oline was down to her black La Perla underwear, I couldn’t stand it anymore and neither could she. I grabbed her arm and marched her into the bedroom, throwing her, giggling, onto the bed, while she voiced concerns about her fiancé, Malcolm, an optometrist, whom she was to be married to in the spring.

  We both fell asleep briefly, and when I wake up, I’m amazed to find that it is still only twenty past one. I must get something to eat. Caroline leans across me, takes my hands and briefly places them against her breasts, before pulling her bra back down.

  ‘I have to go and have a pee. It’s your damn coffee. Don’t go away.’

  I watch her as she glides out of the room, still in her bra, suspenders, stockings and heels. I thought that I might be looking at Temple Security as the main culprit behind all of this, but now I’m not so sure. It could just be a convenient place for Mr X to get personnel; lots of former police officers, some of whom may have a shady past and will do what you tell them. I pull a sheet over myself and stare at the ceiling.

  So is this some sort of masonic conspiracy with Paige McBride unwittingly at the centre of it? It’s pretty unlikely. The masonic angle might, however, explain how Tansil, Gable and Footitt got away with so much, if you happen to believe in all that sort of stuff. Perhaps there’s a freemasonry connection with Temple Security that I haven’t detected yet.

  Declan Sharpe is the only one out of the loop as far as this lodge is concerned (or maybe they forgot to put him on the list). Even so, he’s a former police officer too, and is connected to Gable. Is this an important lodge? Is Declan already a freemason, but in another lodge? Could the same be true of Henry Parsons? Anything’s possible. Do they do transfers like football teams? Maybe Tansil or Gable said they’d put a good word in for Declan if he went along with everything, and might be in with a chance of joining the prestigious Yeoman’s Row mob.

  The finger is certainly pointing in this direction. Without doubt, there are four lodge members actively involved in this. Three of them definitely involved in Jamie Baldwin’s assault and one of them almost certainly colluding with the smuggling of that girl into Rikki’s flat.

  I feel stupid that it’s only just occurred to me that there’s a big clue in the name: Temple Security. Whoever thought that one up must have been a freemason. Do freemasons own the company? There were a lot of senior and middle management on their website, but no owners or founders; at least none that I noticed.

  I’m just wondering where Caroline’s got to when she calls out to me from the kitchen. I can hear her tapping on the computer.

  ‘What was the name of that girl again?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The charity one. The high-maintenance one you said you’d sleep with. The cheap perfume one with the bigger ass than me.’

  ‘Oh, her. Cordelia Chudwell.’

  ‘Come and look at this.’

  I get up and join her. She flashes me a look of mock shock.

  ‘Mr Beckett! You are naked!’

  ‘Just keep thinking about that Christmas bonus, Miss Chow.’

  ‘You said that last year. I got nothing.’

  She taps the computer screen with one of her well-manicured fingernails. ‘I thought I’d take a look at the top man at this place. The lodge, I mean. Just out of curiosity, you know? Viscount Ombersley?’ I sit down next to her. She smells good. She smells of overpriced perfume and unthinkable sex. She places a hand over the centre of the screen, blocking something out. ‘Now. Are you ready for a big surprise?’

  ‘OK. Let’s have it.’

  She pulls her hand away from the screen with a dramatic flourish. It’s a website called MacJarrow’s Peers and Baronets. At the top is a heading: 5th Viscount Ombersley. There’s a photograph of a smirking man with receding blond hair in his mid- to late fifties. He’s pretty seriously overweight with the beginnings of a triple chin and a face made for punching. Underneath the photograph it says ‘Hugo Walter Clement Jaspar Chudwell – 5th Viscount Ombersley’. Well, hello daddy.

  He’s the owner and chairman of Quadrivium Pharmaceuticals. His great-great-grandfather was the founder of the company and he was also the first viscount. He’s married to Lady Ombersley (really?), formerly Nancy Deborah Cynthia Roberta Constance Sillars. They have four children, The Hon. Reginald Tobias Fox Quentin Chudwell (heir apparent), The Hon. Jolyon Tancrede Murray Ralph Chudwell, The Hon. Cynthia Arabella Tabitha Othella Chudwell and The Hon. Cordelia Ellen Roberta Bryony Chudwell.

  Well, well, well. So is this where the pressure and manipulation is coming from? Caroline looks almost manically excited, but I warn her not to count her chickens. We spend five minutes doing further research on the viscount. Silver spoon, useless in school, mega rich: it’s a common enough pattern.

  We find a four-year-old article about how he does most of his directorial work from home, thanks to the advances in computer conferencing. He like to boast about how he can attend three meetings at the same time from his living room while enjoying a double-malt whisky. It’s more likely that the people who really run these companies would prefer not to have him in the office. I get a moment of doubt reading all of this stuff; it seems like I’m getting further and further away from Rikki, but at the same time I feel like this is the way in, possibly the only way in.

  We find an interview with his wife, talking about how hard her life is managing their big estate in the country (or telling others how to manage it). She’s a rather plain-looking woman with no hint of humour in a rather wan face. She’s dark, like Cordelia, but without the looks.

  With no obvious qualifications other than her husband’s wealth and/or existence, she used to sit on the board of a couple of right-wing political think-tanks and was an advisor to the board of governors of Quadrivium. She also used to appear on television from time to time, being asked her opinion on various social and political matters. However, all that stopped about five years ago. No reason is given, at least not in this article. She speaks fluent French and Italian and studied Cordon Bleu cookery at the Tante Marie Culinary Academy. As I scan the interview, I notice that her conversation is clipped and fragmented, rather as if it was edited by a malfunctioning piece of computer software.

  ‘What’s wrong with her eyes?’ asks Caroline.

  ‘Looks like hyperthyroidism. Causes the tissues and muscle behind the eye to swell. Pushes the eyeballs forward. I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it.’

  ‘You’re a bigtime smartass, aren’t you.’

  We find another article that features her name and that of Gail Mozelle, the actress, but when Caroline clicks on it, an error message appears, telling us it’s a broken link. It makes me wonder how many pieces of useless, non-functioning internet debris are actually out there and how much cyberspace they use up. Does it even work like that?

  There’s a recent piece in The Economist about Quadrivium Pharmaceuticals, who are developing a new drug for anxiety and depression. There’s a companion piece about Viscount Ombersley’s (I’m just plain old Hugo Chudwell) other business interests, which are many and varied. Caroline spots it immediately and almost pokes her finger through the screen.

  ‘Temple Security! He’s a fucking director of it! It’s him! He’s Mr X!’

  ‘Hold on. We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Are you kidding? He slings all that money to the charity so he can put the screws on his daughter to keep booking the burlesque lady, he’s a director of Temple Security where all his goons work and he knows two of them from the lodge. It has to be him.’

  She grabs my bicep tightly, her voice excited. ‘OK. The two freaks who broke the guy’s arm both work in Temple Security and they’re both members of this lodge. It could stop there. It could just be those two. But you said yourself – they’re working for someone, a very important someone. Chudwell is kind of their boss at Temple and he’s kind of their boss at the lodge. And he’s the only one with a direct family link to that charity.’

  ‘OK. Maybe you’re right. It loo
ks like it is him, but it doesn’t have to be him. He’d been slinging money to that charity before all of this started, remember, so it isn’t all watertight.’

  ‘Perhaps. But maybe the charity wasn’t doing so good, you know? Who knows how these damn things work. Maybe he was trying to make his daughter look successful. But now it’s payback time. His daughter is his bitch!’

  ‘OK. Slow down.’

  ‘That’s not what you were saying half an hour ago.’

  ‘Neither were you, Miss Chow. Let’s just take this calmly and pick it apart slowly. Oh, I forgot to mention this. There’s another member of this lodge who’s probably involved. I rang up Frampton House, pretending to look for a non-existent reception job. One of the guys they said to contact was Thomas Wade, the Reception Supervisor. He’s on that freemasonry list. I was curious as to how they could have got that girl into Rikki’s flat without anyone noticing. I think this Wade guy arranged it in some way, or allowed it to happen. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t.’

  ‘I’m getting confused.’

  ‘Me, too. Let’s take a look at it all in black and white.’

  I drag my A4 cartridge pad towards me and start writing down all the links I can think of, for Caroline’s benefit as well as mine. I’m hoping something will leap off the page and solve the case. This never happens.

  Chudwell: Masonic Lodge, Temple Security, Fly a Kite.

  Tansil: Masonic Lodge, Temple Security. Ex-police.

  Gable: Masonic Lodge, Temple Security. Ex-police.

  Footitt: Masonic Lodge. Psychiatric Consultant.

  Sharpe: Temple Security. Ex-police.

  Wade: Masonic Lodge. Reception SupervisorFrampton House.

  Doesn’t look too amazing at present, but it’ll help me illustrate things to Caroline. She has to be in the loop where all this is concerned now. Plus, sometimes I get the feeling I’m working for her and not for Mr Sheng. I give her the lowdown on the principal scumbags.