At this slightly perilous moment they were interrupted by the sound of wheels and a diesel engine, and they both looked out of the window, sealed shut with genuinely antique dust and cobweb, to see a van with a trailer bouncing slowly over the imperfections of the yard. ‘Oh damn, it’s the smith,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to go. You finish your tea – you won’t be in the way here.’
‘I’ll have to go too,’ he said. ‘By the way, if David should ring you before I’ve seen him, don’t tell him anything, will you? Don’t even say I’ve been here.’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’ She gave him an odd look, and he could read the question hovering on her lips: do you suspect him of something? But either pressure of time or natural discretion suppressed it. ‘Oh, I was going to give you his phone number,’ she said instead. She went to the door to wave to the smith, then came back to open a large and mud-smeared ledger, from which she copied down a telephone number on to a Post-it. ‘You’ll think it foolish, but I don’t even have his address. But if I leave a message on his answerphone, he always rings back, so it hasn’t been a problem.’
Slider glanced at the number. It was a land line.
‘Don’t worry, we can get the address from the number.’
‘Yes, I suppose you can,’ she said.
FOURTEEN
Dancing in the Dark
‘This case just gets nuttier all the time,’ said Atherton, back from the Wynnstay flat. ‘What’s Corley doing going horse-riding with David Regal?’
‘David Regal?’ Swilley said. ‘Of Regal Forsdyke? The solicitors that’re the legal representatives of Ransom – which belongs to the same group as Apsis, which owns the Hot Box. Boss, couldn’t David Regal be the big boss that Villiers said was getting very friendly with Corley?’
‘It’s a bit of a leap, but it’s certainly possible,’ said Slider.
‘So was Corley gay all the time?’ McLaren asked in wounded tones. ‘No one’s ever said that before.’
‘He had an affair with Kara,’ Hollis said. ‘That’s definite. ‘So he wasn’t gay then – or not exclusively.’
‘But if he was gay, maybe the murderer’s a man after all,’ said McLaren. ‘Black-sack man.’
‘What about the woman’s print on the vodka bottle?’ Swilley objected.
‘That could’ve got there any time,’ McLaren answered.
‘If he weren’t gay but pretending to David Regal he were, he’d get found out,’ Hollis said. ‘Maybe that’d be enough to make Regal murder him.’
Slider said, ‘If it turns out to have been personal after all, Mr Wetherspoon will murder me. Obviously we’ve got to get after this Regal type, but we’ve got to tread carefully.’
‘Sir,’ said Gascoyne, ‘I don’t think it was Regal that was with Corley on the night he was murdered.’
They all looked at him. ‘Have you got something?’ Slider asked.
‘You tracked down the pizza? Good lad,’ said Hollis.
Gascoyne looked pleased. ‘It wasn’t a pizza restaurant, it was an Italian restaurant. Called Giardino, in Elgin Crescent. I was just working my way through them one by one – there’s a hell of a lot of Italian restaurants in Notting Hill, you know. It’s like looking for a curry house in Brick Lane.’
‘Thick as leaves in Vallombrosa,’ Slider murmured.
Gascoyne cocked him a look, and seeing no more was forthcoming, went on. ‘Well, at first it was all, no, no, just like the other places. But I made everyone look at the photo, and there was this one waiter that kind of clocked it. He said no, like the others, but he gave me a look, and sort of flicked his eyes towards the back, so I went round and waited, and after a bit he comes out the kitchen door.’
He wasn’t Italian, though he looked the part – slim and olive-skinned with dark curly hair. In fact he was Portuguese, but he’d been in the catering trade since he left school, and coming to London for the better money, he’d learned enough of most languages to be anything the punters wanted.
‘I see this man,’ he said eagerly, having another look at the photo. ‘He was in here Sunday night, with a lady. But the manager, Pietro, he says to say nothing, because he was in disguise, this man. We get a lot of famous people in here,’ he added proudly. ‘Film stars, politicos, all sorts. They don’t come in if we talk about them, so Pietro says always, never show you know who they are.’
‘And did you know who he was?’ Gascoyne asked.
‘Me? No, I not know him, but Pietro say he was pop singer in old days.’
‘Ben Jackson?’ Gascoyne suggested.
‘Yes, that was name Pietro say, but I no heard of him. Anyway, he was with lady, came in late, ten o’clock, have meal, then he pay cash, leave good tip, and they go.’
‘What time did they leave?’
‘Maybe midnight, little bit before? I hold the door for them when they leave. They were nearly the last, we got the last ones out about quarter past twelve.’
‘Can you describe the lady to me?’
‘Is hard to say,’ he said. ‘Whenever I come to table, she looking down, or search for something in her bag. I not really see her face much, not close up, just from passing by. I think she good looking, maybe a bit older than him. Had red hair, short like—’ He made a curved gesture with both hands from the top of his head to his chin. ‘Tight black top, black trousers, very sexy lady. They having good talks and getting romantic, I think. They holding hands across the table at the end.’
‘You said you held the door for them. Did you see where they went when they left the restaurant?’
‘No, they cross the road, maybe going to car, I don’t know. But,’ he added eagerly, ‘as he go past me, I hear him say to her, “Which club we going to?” But I no hear her answer. She gone in front, not turn her head, I don’t know if she hear him, anyway.’
‘So you see, sir,’ Gascoyne finished his story, ‘he was having a romantic meeting with a woman at around midnight, so it’s likely it was her he took back to his flat, isn’t it?’
‘I always thought that bath thing was more like a woman’s seduction,’ Atherton said.
‘It was too early to let him take her home,’ Slider mused. ‘People might still be around at that time of night. Hence the club. But which one?’
‘This is like the Flynn murder,’ Atherton said. ‘Repeating her effects. Maybe she took Flynn to a club as well.’
‘The Forty-Niners is near the Giardino restaurant,’ Hollis said. ‘Maybe she took him there.’
‘And that was Tommy Flynn’s club,’ McLaren added.
‘But we’ve already canvassed the Forty-Niners,’ Mackay said. ‘Couldn’t get anyone to recognize Corley.’
‘Better ask them again,’ Slider said. ‘Any any other clubs in the area as well. Meanwhile, we’ve got to think what to do about David Regal.’
‘Boss,’ said Swilley, ‘the phone number you got for him from the horse woman goes to the same address as his office, but when I tried it, there’s an answering machine on. And the number listed for the office is different. Doesn’t that seem a bit suspicious?’
‘You didn’t leave a message, did you?’ Slider asked.
‘No, boss,’ Swilley said, managing to convey in two short words that that question should never have been asked.
‘Good. The Regal side needs thinking about before we move. Leaving it aside for the moment, I’d like to know why Corley said he’d got a dancing job, and whether there was any connection with Guthrie. Talk to Guthrie’s sister, try and find out more about his dancing career: where he trained, was it genuine, did he really dance in those shows, how did he get the jobs – anything that might connect him to anything to do with Corley, the clubs, Apsis, and so on.’
‘I get the idea, boss,’ Swilley said, still a little wounded. ‘You can leave it to me.’
‘And I think I had better have a chat with an old friend of mine, who knows more about the clubs and drugs scene than I do.’
The phone had rung and Hollis had
answered it. Now he said, ‘Guv, there’s a lady to see you.’ Slider looked up, and Hollis made a sympathetic face. ‘It’s Corley’s mum.’
She was so obviously and extremely posh that someone from the shop had conducted her straight upstairs to the small interview room, rather than leave her in the cloisters of sin downstairs, where anyone might come in – and frequently did – and where the background smell of disinfectant only served to remind you of the smell of sick it was deployed to cover.
She stood as Slider came in, looked at him seriously and offered her hand. She was tall and slim, beautiful in a well-preserved way, exuding a faint waft of subtle perfume as she moved; her clothes simple but so expensive they put her way outside Slider’s realms of experience. Her shoes were a poem, her hands beautifully kept, her thick, sandy-fair hair exquisitely cut, her pearls at neck and ear so good he wanted to bite them. Apart from her tallness, it did not look as though either of her children much resembled her – certainly not in colouring, with her fair hair and fine hazel eyes. He supposed they took after her husband. He remembered Mrs Shepstone saying that Ben had been her pet, and he felt a quickening of sympathy.
He shook her cool hand briefly, introducing himself, and said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. Won’t you sit down? Can I offer you tea or coffee?’
‘Nothing, thank you,’ she said, sitting. ‘You are the officer in charge of – I suppose I must call it the case?’
Her voice was as exquisite and upper class as the rest of her. One did not any more meet many people like this – there were, to begin with, few of them, and they tended to lead a life so much apart that the circles never intersected. What had she made of Ben’s strange career? But he reminded himself that she was a writer, and must therefore have experienced, at least in mind, many different kinds of life.
‘My daughter says you do not believe it was suicide. I’m not sure if that makes it worse or not.’
‘Neither option can be easy for you,’ Slider said. ‘You must be devastated.’
‘It’s hard to take it in,’ she said. ‘I still expected Ben to be there at the gate when I came through at Heathrow. He always made a point of meeting us when we came home.’ She gave a faint smile. ‘I think he just liked airports. My husband will be coming back tomorrow – he had business he could not abandon. But I suppose there’s nothing we can do anyway. It makes one feel so helpless. Still, I had to come. Perhaps you could tell me what one does about funeral arrangements. I have no experience of what happens in a case of – murder.’
She hesitated slightly on the word. She was afraid of making it real by saying it out loud. But it was already too late for that. He spoke to her calmly and quietly about the procedures, and saw her brace herself on the practicality. At the end of it she said, ‘If there is any way in which I can help – any questions I can answer for you . . . But I expect Jennifer has already told you everything.’
‘It’s never possible to know everything,’ he said. ‘That’s the problem. But there is something I wanted to ask, and it would save bothering Mrs Shepstone again.’
‘Please,’ she said, almost eagerly. ‘Anything.’
‘Did Ben have any training in dance? I know he studied music, and he was a member of Footlights which showed he had acting ability, but was there ever any formal stage training?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He studied piano, clarinet and classical guitar at school. He never went to stage school, or a dance school. Why do you ask?’
‘When he left the last job we know about – as a barman in the Hot Box club – he told them that he had a better job, as a dancer.’
‘A dancer? Where?’ she asked with surprise.
‘That’s what we’re wondering.’
She shook her head. ‘He learned a few dance moves when he was in Breaking Wave, for their videos, but that was all. He must have been joking.’
Or laying a trail, Slider thought.
‘But I don’t understand – what do you mean, the last job, as a barman? Ben was a journalist, for Musical World.’
Slider looked at her carefully. ‘I think I had better tell you what we know so far.’
‘I wish you would,’ she said.
She listened in silence to his exposition, but her face became more bewildered by the sentence. When he had finished she said, ‘False names? Dyed hair? Night clubs and pornographic films? I can hardly believe all this. It’s – it’s farcical! Are you quite sure it’s Ben you’re talking about?’ Before he could answer she waved the question away with a hand, and closed her eyes in a pained way. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t believe I said that. Of course you’re sure. But what on earth was he doing?’
‘I rather hoped you might have an idea about that.’
She shook her head, but lapsed into a silence so obviously intensely thoughtful that he waited it out, and when at last she looked up, he said quietly, ‘What is it? Please tell me.’
She drew a breath, gathering her thoughts. ‘I don’t know, of course – it’s the purest guesswork – but what it looks like is –’ another pause, perhaps searching for the right word – ‘knight-errantry.’
‘Knight-errantry?’
‘It would have been very like him. He was a very gallant person, underneath the careless exterior, and very protective of those he loved.’
‘You are thinking of Annie Casari?’ She nodded. ‘What did you think of her?’
‘I thought her a sad, weak, lost soul – out of her place and out of her depth. I was unhappy about Ben’s relationship with her, because it was very bad for him, without, as far as I could see, offering any real hope for her. Horrible as it is, I have to admit a small part of me was relieved when she died – though desperately sad for her and her family, of course – because it set Ben free.’
‘But I thought he was no longer going out with her?’
‘He wasn’t, officially. But that didn’t mean he didn’t still care for her.’
‘Your daughter said he was over her.’
She gave a small nod. ‘Yes, I can understand Jennifer saying that. She probably convinced herself that it was so. She was always inclined to underestimate the strength of Ben’s feelings for Annie, because she didn’t want it to be true.’ She sighed. ‘Poor Jennifer. She has always believed I favoured Ben.’
Slider said, ‘She told me he was your favourite.’
‘It’s very hard, when one of your children is brilliant and the other is not, to make them both feel you are treating them alike. Ben didn’t think I favoured him, and I made every effort not to, even sometimes being harsher with him that I would otherwise have been, so that Jennifer would not feel hard done by. But some things seem to be beyond reaching. Jennifer felt herself inferior to Ben and so assumed everyone would treat her as second-class. The miracle is that it didn’t make her hate her brother. She loved him and tried to protect him, always, from childhood upwards. And one of the things she wanted to protect him against was Annie, because she could see, as we all could, that Annie was not good for Ben. Of course, she would never have thought anyone was good enough for Ben. But Ben loved Annie, and there was nothing to be done about that.’
‘So at the time of Annie’s death, you think he was still in love with her?’
‘I know he was. He wrote to me, several impassioned letters. They were very hard for me to read.’
‘You were not at home – in England, I mean – when Annie died?’
‘No. We had come for our spring holiday early, but we left England a week before it happened.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘You are thinking that I ought to have come back to comfort Ben. But he specifically asked me not to, in his letters. He said there was nothing I could do, and that it would only fret him to have me change my plans on his account. And he was quite right, on both counts. But what occurs to me now is that he may have had another reason.’
‘The knight-errantry?’ Slider said.
‘Yes. If he was embarking on some kind of campaign to – I don’t know – save o
ther young women in Annie’s situation – going undercover, perhaps, to get close to them and the men who exploited them – it would have hindered him to have concerned relatives enquiring tenderly where he was going every minute.’
‘I can see that,’ Slider said. ‘So you think perhaps he was involved in – shall we call it – investigative journalism? Concerning the drugs scene?’
It had been Porson’s idea quite early on – one had to give the old boy credit. He was an oddity, but not a fool.
‘It seems to me to make sense of what you’ve told me. And it would be in keeping with his character. His grandfather used to say he was born asking questions; and he was always careful of those weaker than him. At least,’ she said, with a quick frown, ‘I hope it was that, and not just revenge. Though perhaps the two are not unconnected.’
‘Revenge against whom?’
‘The suppliers of drugs. Those who make fortunes out of it, out of the weakness of people like Annie. He did –’ she looked uncomfortable – ‘write to me in that vein, immediately after Annie’s death. But his later letters were more full of love than hatred, so I didn’t take it seriously. What do you think he was doing?’
The question was sudden and abrupt and took him unprepared.
‘I don’t know. I think he may have been trying to bring something to light, but what his state of mind was, I can’t judge. And I’m no closer to knowing who killed him.’
She winced at the word, but said, ‘It must surely be someone from that world, the drugs supplier he was trying to uncover.’
‘So one would assume. But unfortunately he hasn’t left us anything to go on. If he made any notes about what he had discovered or what he suspected, we haven’t found them. There’s a missing laptop – stolen, we believe, by the killer – and if there was a backup – a disc or a memory stick or something of that sort – we haven’t discovered it yet.’
Blood Never Dies Page 21
