by John Harvey
“Here,” Elder said, as Marjorie Parker brought her bike to a halt at the curb. “Let me take one of those.”
In any event, he took both, following her round to the back of the house and waiting while she locked the bicycle in the shed.
“I’ve some date and walnut loaf in there,” Marjorie Parker said. “If you’d like to join me.”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t. There was just one thing I wanted to ask.”
“Certainly.”
“When you were talking about Claire Meecham before, you said something about her signing up for a course—after a gallery visit, I think it was.”
“That’s correct.”
“You can’t remember what the course was, I suppose?”
“Yes, I can. It was an introduction to photography. Appreciation, that is. Not the practical side. I can’t recall the exact wording, but that’s what it was about. It was linked in some way to the show we’d been to see.”
“And this was here in the city?”
“Yes. That small gallery out by the old university. The Weston, I think it might be called. But why? Why is it important?”
Elder smiled. “It might not be. Just filling in a few gaps, that’s all.”
“Whoever did it,” Marjorie Parker said, with a glance over her shoulder, “you haven’t yet found him?”
“Not yet.”
“That poor woman.”
“Yes, indeed.” He set her bags down beside the rear door. “One further thing—this course, you can’t remember who was teaching it, I suppose?”
A firm shake of the head. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“Not to worry. I can easily find out.”
Two phone calls later, he did. “An Introduction to the Art of Photography.” Eight afternoon sessions. Tutor: Vincent Blaine.
“EVER HEARD THE EXPRESSION,” MAUREEN PRIOR SAID, “‘grasping at straws’?”
They were in her currently favourite café, late lunch, Prior making short work of a bacon and tomato sandwich, Elder labouring through a slice of apple pie and thinking he should have opted for Marjorie Parker’s date and walnut loaf instead.
“I know it’s pretty far-fetched,” Elder said, “but at the moment, what else have we got?”
“Not a great deal. Singer, possibly. Dowland, remotely.”
“Then where’s the harm in keeping half an eye on Blaine? Poking around?”
“The harm is if it distracts you from other things.”
Elder pushed his unfinished piece of pie aside. “Look, this class Blaine taught, May, June of last year.”
“A year ago.”
“A year ago. According to the records, there were fifteen people who signed up; two dropped out after the first couple of weeks, the average turnout was a dozen. A dozen students, two hours a week for eight weeks. A man like Blaine who, whatever else he is, is certainly observant. How likely is it, do you think, he wouldn’t remember Claire Meecham’s name? That, at least.”
Prior leaned back. “Okay, let’s assume for the moment that you’re right. He did remember her name. There’s a very good reason, surely, for him not letting on. He’s already been questioned over any potential involvement with the Irene Fowler murder. Now here you come along, doing your best to tie him into a second. Why volunteer something that might put you under suspicion if there’s no need?”
“Because withholding information’s more suspicious still.”
“Only if you do your homework and find out. And then if you broach it with him again, all he need say, is oh, sorry, I forgot, I never was very good with names.”
“I still don’t like it. It doesn’t smell right.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.” He grinned and shook his head. “No, well, it probably is. He intimidates me, that’s why. And he knows it, relishes it.”
Prior had finished her bacon and tomato and was eyeing Elder’s leftover apple pie.
“Where did this appetite come from all of a sudden?” Elder asked, amused.
Prior grinned. “Compensation, I suppose.”
“For what?”
She laughed. “Everything.”
Elder went back to the counter for two teas.
“So what are you going to do?” Prior asked. “Go out there and confront him?”
“I don’t think so. Not right away. I might try another tack instead.”
“The girlfriend?”
“There’s some kind of exhibition at the castle. The Staithes Group,” Elder said, affecting an accent. “They’re painters, you know.”
“Great,” Prior said. “See if you can’t get one of them to come round and finish my kitchen.”
She was ferreting in her bag for her wallet, when her cell started ringing.
“Okay,” she said, after listening. “Right, right. Ten minutes. I’m on my way.” And, to Elder, “Best leave off your artistic leanings for a while, Frank. Looks like something serious has cropped up at last.”
Chapter 24
WAYNE JOHNS HAD BEEN IN TROUBLE WITH THE POLICE throughtout his teens: petty theft, breaking and entering, stealing and driving away. When he was seventeen he broke into a parked car and was ripping out the CD player and radio when the owner returned. In the ensuing altercation, Johns knocked the man to the floor and kicked him enough to break several ribs and endanger an eye. The magistrates had had enough. Warning after warning had gone unheeded, supervision in the community hadn’t worked, and ASBOs had yet to be invented. Eighteen months at Her Majesty’s pleasure. The well-known short, sharp shock.
Against all odds, it worked.
Johns came out of prison and, with the help of his probation officer, got a job in a timber yard. A year later, he enrolled in a day-release course at college, further education, a chance to make up for what he’d missed through truanting and playing the fool. Gradually, he began accumulating qualifications, skills. His boss at the timber yard encouraged him to spend half a day each week in the office, observing how things were done—orders, specifications, accounts. By the time he was twenty-five, Johns had struck out on his own, supplying materials for bespoke kitchens, high-end stuff with large profit margins; Johns working with a freelance designer, doing most of the fitting himself at first, then gradually taking on staff who would do that for him.
Come thirty, he was bored: sold out, diversified; a venture or two that failed to spark. Three years followed, running a bar in Portugal, the Algarve. An affair with a married woman that ran aground. Rumours of a scandal that was hushed up, but not before money had changed hands. On the move again, in Barcelona, Johns met a man who was refurbishing an old hotel close to the Ramblas, and after working for him for a month for nothing, showing him what he could do, they went into partnership, the hotel owner having ideas for a new conference centre which he thought Johns would be able to deliver.
He did.
But then boredom started setting in again. Johns thought it might be time to think about moving back home to the UK. Some ten years ago, he arrived back in England, aged thirty-nine. Moderately wealthy. Tanned. Handsome in an obvious sort of way. His hair was starting to fade back at the temples, but otherwise there was little physical change from the man who had left for mainland Europe a decade before. His accent was a mixture of his native East Midlands and a half-jokey Chas ’n’ Dave cockney, with the occasional phrase in Portuguese or Spanish thrown in for good measure.
The company he ran now was called BestCon.
www.bestcon.co.uk
Conference facilities provided for venues of any size, from five-star hotels to village halls: furniture and equipment, everything from simple flip charts to interactive white boards and the most sophisticated data projectors.
Their offices were located on the Meadow Trading Estate, not so far from the Notts County soccer ground and the abattoir.
Wearing a white fluffy top that swaddled her breasts and stopped well short of her navel, the receptionist was s
tanding away from her desk, talking to a young man in overalls, when Elder and Maureen Prior arrived.
She broke off her conversation long enough to tell them Mr. Johns was busy.
Maureen Prior showed her warrant card and tried again.
“I said, he’s busy.” When she turned away the first few inches of her purple thong and her tattoo were visible above the top of her jeans.
Prior moved close enough to get her attention.
“Listen, Kylie, or whatever your name is, if Mr. Johns is in the building, we need to see him now. So stop your chat, pick up the phone and call him, interrupt whatever he’s doing, okay?”
“I can’t,” the girl said almost apologetically, feeling less sure of her ground. “He’ll go crazy.”
Elder stepped around the desk and knocked hard on the door bearing Wayne Johns’s name in gold paint.
“What the fuck...?” Throwing open the door, Johns stopped short, tie adrift, looking first at Elder, then at Maureen Prior, warrant card still in her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Johns,” the receptionist faltered. “I tried telling them you were busy.”
“’S’all right, no problem. See if you can’t conjure up some coffee for our visitors, there’s a love.” He turned to Elder. “Give me five minutes to finish up here. And you...” jabbing a finger toward the young man who’d been sidling toward the door, “get your skinny arse back where it belongs and stop sniffing round in here or I’ll have you out on your ear.”
Five minutes, of course, were ten. The coffee was insipid and little more than lukewarm. Wayne Johns’s office had a view out toward the waste-disposal unit and the cattle market, a walnut desk with leather inlays and photographs of Johns glad-handing at various functions on the walls.
“Corporate entertainment,” he said proudly. “One of the services we provide.”
In one of the photographs, he was standing with his arms draped round the shoulders of someone who could have been Phil Collins on a rough night; in another he was kissing a woman with reddish blond hair who Maureen recognized as Carol Decker, formerly lead singer with T’Pau.
“‘Heart and Soul,’” Johns said, following her gaze. “‘China in Your Hand,’ ‘Valentine.’ Great songs. And she still does a great show, even now.”
“Tell us about Claire Meecham,” Prior said.
“Meecham? Meecham?” Johns allowed a worried look to pass slowly across his face. “Sorry, no bells. She with some group? A singer, what?”
“She’s dead,” Prior said.
“Oh, dear. Yeah, well, I’m sorry, I suppose. Whoever she was.”
“Fifteenth of October, last year,” Prior said. “You sent her an e-mail. Arranging to meet her at the Lace Market Hotel.”
“I did?”
“November seventh, another e-mail, dinner at World Service, my place after.”
“World Service, eh? Pretty fancy.”
“Mr. Johns,” Elder said, “stop pissing us around.”
Johns looked at them, one to the other and back again. “She never showed.”
“What?”
“The restaurant. She never showed.”
“You do admit to knowing her, then?”
“Yeah, course.”
“A minute ago...”
“I read about it, right? What happened to her. In the Post. On the news, wasn’t it? On Sky.”
“Then you knew we were asking for people to come forward with information.”
“People who knew something about what happened, yes.”
“And that’s not you?”
“No.”
“You knew her, that’s what you said.”
“I met her once. Twice.”
“Which?”
“Twice. I met her twice. The time we met at the Lace Market Hotel and another time before that. Some Thai place in Hockley, I don’t remember the name.”
“And you met her through...”
“That Internet dating thing. I browse it sometimes...” He shrugged a little self-consciously, as if it were something he didn’t easily admit.
“The evening you say she didn’t turn up to meet you...” Elder began.
“Like I said, she bottled out, didn’t show. Left me sitting there with me thumb up me arse.”
“And did she get in touch later with a reason, an excuse?”
“She didn’t have to.”
“Why was that?”
Johns took his time. “That last time we met, right? Some of the stuff that went on...” He glanced uneasily toward Prior. “Nothing that she wasn’t up for, no force, coercion, nothing like that, not for one minute. Not once we got going...” He smiled at Elder, almost conspiratorially. “The quiet ones, yeah? Sometimes they’re the ones take you most by surprise.”
From Elder there was no response, though he could feel the anger coming off Maureen Prior like steam on a cold day.
“She surprised herself,” Johns continued, oblivious. “That was the thing. The way she got into it, you know? And it frightened her, that’s what I think. The extent to which she let go. I tried to talk to her about it after, but she wasn’t having any. Didn’t want to know. Supposed to be blokes what never want to talk, but no, next morning she was out of there like the dog after the rabbit, first thing. Wouldn’t stick around for breakfast or anything.” Johns released a slow breath. “I let it settle, gave her time. Got back in touch. Dinner, I thought, somewhere nice. Quiet.” He gestured with open hands. “End of story.”
“Not quite,” Prior said.
“Eh?”
“This stuff you referred to. Whatever went on between you. You might have to be a bit more explicit.”
“If that’s what you want.” Johns treated her to a broad smile. “It was nothing that much out of the ordinary, I’d say. Depends what you’re used to. But, you know, blindfolds, restraints. A moderate amount of pain.”
“What kind of pain?” Prior’s voice was quick and sharp.
“A good slapping. Across the buttocks. When she was blindfolded. Tied down. It helped her to come.”
It was quiet: the sound of three people breathing. Noises filtering in from outside: muted voices, the occasional telephone, traffic slowing for the roundabout that leads toward the racecourse or into the city.
“It said in the paper she’d been strangled,” Johns said.
“That’s right.”
“And you think what? It might have been someone she met through the Net?”
“It’s possible,” Elder said.
Johns shook his head. “I wish I could help more. She was all right. A bit uptight. You know, at first. But all right.”
“We might want to talk to you again,” Prior said, getting to her feet.
“Of course,” Johns said, holding out his hand. “Any time. Any time at all.”
“One other thing,” Elder said at the door.
Johns cocked his head.
“All this physical stuff—restraints and the rest—what was it you said? A moderate amount of pain. I wonder, is there any danger it just might get out of hand? Excitement of the moment? That kind of thing?”
“It’s possible, I suppose.”
“So what do you do then?”
“Back off, what else?”
“And if you can’t?”
Johns held his gaze. “Ever happens, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?” ELDER SAID.
They were sitting in Maureen Prior’s car in the middle of the almost empty Lady Bay Retail Park, stranded between JJB Sports and Burger King. At least half of the businesses seemed to have closed down for good.
“About what? About Johns?”
“Anything.”
“I think it’s a shame if that woman died because she wasn’t prepare to shrivel up like some old prune.”
“Doing what she did, she was taking a risk; she must have known.”
“Everything in life’s a risk, Frank. Either that or there’s no fucking life at all.”
<
br /> Elder looked at her, surprised. In all the time he had known her, he doubted he had heard her swear on more than a few occasions, if at all.
“Stop doing that,” Prior said.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me like that.”
Prior pushed out of the car and slammed the door.
Elder watched as she walked off toward the boarded-up furniture superstore, stood there for some moments, then turned and came slowly back to where he was now standing, one hand resting on the open car door.
“Want me to get some coffee or something?” Elder said, nodding toward Burger King.
Prior shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Losing my temper.”
“No need.”
A maroon Toyota went slowly past and came to a stop by a Staples.
“Seriously,” Elder said. “Wayne Johns. What did you think?”
“A chancer. Too full of himself by half. And admitting he knew her, what went on, he gave it up too fast.”
“You think he should have held out for longer? Denied it?”
“It’s what I would have expected.”
“But if he’s innocent, nothing to hide...”
“Then why lie in the first place?”
Elder shook his head. “The day someone tells us the truth straight out, something that might implicate themselves, I’ll start believing the impossible.”
“Claire Meecham,” Elder said a few moments later, “she had marks on her wrists and ankles where she’d been tied up.”
“Bruises, yes, slight abrasions. Whatever was used was either something soft like a scarf, or else it had been wrapped in material of some kind.”
“No traces?”
“Not enough for any kind of identification. At least, that’s my understanding. Whoever did this, he washed down the body before putting her clothes back on.”
“And we didn’t get anything from the soap or whatever it was he used?”
“A slight trace of lavender oil, geranium; other than that, no colouring, no perfume. It narrows it down but not beyond anything you can’t buy in any Superdrug or Boots.”
“She was tied up, nonetheless.”
