by Moody, Susan
‘His sister,’ I said. ‘Dimsie Drayton.’
‘Oh yes, I’ve met her! In the same line of business as her brother, isn’t she?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And how do you think I can be of help?’ Her hair looked crisp, like a wafer biscuit. When she patted the waves above her ears, it sounded like one, too. Her eyes rested on me thoughtfully, and I wasn’t certain she believed a word I said. In my experience, those who don’t believe the façade you present to the world are nearly always consummate liars themselves. On the other hand, although I’ve got as big an honesty button as the next man (or woman), I freely acknowledge that there are times when lying is the only way forward.
‘Well, I was interested in what you said on the phone about Tristan taking risks. Always at the front of the queue when a risky assignment came up, or words to that effect. Would this have been during his army days?’
Her gaze swivelled from side to side. ‘Army?’
‘Yes, I wondered if you’d met through the service in some capacity or other.’
‘Me?’ She gave a false little laugh and blew a large amount of carcinogenic smoke at a plant unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. Then she jabbed her half-smoked fag into the glass ashtray beside her. Rattled was the word which sprang to mind. ‘I’m afraid I’m just a little housewife!’
And I’m President Putin, I thought. She was as sharp as a needle, and doing an excellent job of concealing it. ‘So how did you …?’
‘It’s my husband!’ she explained. ‘James.’ She glanced at the perky little watch on her perky little wrist. ‘He should be back fairly soon.’
‘So this daredevil attitude of Tristan’s … where did you two encounter it? Was it just your husband, or did you see examples of it too?’
‘They knew each other from schooldays, I believe,’ she said vaguely. ‘Or after!’
‘So your husband went to school with Tristan? Or served with him, did he? Same regiment, or something?’
‘Something like that.’ She reached for another cigarette. I flinched. And so, I swear, did the nearby plant. She gave another little laugh which didn’t really work this time. ‘Why are you asking, anyway? What difference does it make?’ Her mouth turned down pitiably. ‘He’s dead.’
It sounded like a cry of pain. Was she another of Tristan’s conquests? Was she the one his death had been all about? Perhaps the husband – James – had killed him in a fit of jealousy. I wished he’d get a move on and return from wherever he was.
‘Obviously,’ I said, ‘since you two have known him for so long, you probably knew that ten years ago, when he was in his mid-twenties, he disappeared for more than two years.’
She nodded. It wasn’t clear whether she did know or was just hanging in there, waiting to see where I went with this.
‘Did he ever talk about that time?’
‘Not to me. Maybe to James. But I just can’t see the relevance!’
I just bet that she could. I really wished I could too.
I sipped daintily at my coffee. Took dainty little mouse-nibbles of my biscuit. Considered idly how much Yvonne reminded me of Dimsie. Concealing a laser-type brain beneath a fluttery sort of mindless femininity. My thoughts whirled like a Catherine Wheel, throwing out sparks of possibility. What did I really know of Tristan’s life, away from Longbury? Whom did he love? What did he swear allegiance to? If I was on the wrong track, and it wasn’t a woman behind all this, then had he really been tangled up in some dodgy business or other? He had tremendous linguistic abilities. He was strong and fit and clever. He could have been something majorly transgressive. And what about Maurice Colby? There was a crook if ever I heard one on the other end of the phone. I’d be willing to bet there were others. If that were the case, Tristan’s cover occupation as an interior designer could not have been better chosen.
On the table beside her chair, Yvonne’s mobile phone began a lunatic dance, like a demented wasp. She glanced at the caller ID window, got up, said, ‘Excuse me, I won’t be a moment!’ She went out into the hall. I jumped up and poked about a bit. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nothing that produced one of those aha! moments. Innocuous photos of the couple on their wedding day and on other peoples’ showed how normal and ordinary their lives were. A picture of a dog whose breed I couldn’t identify. Books on the shelves which rang no alarm bells, unless an obvious addiction to Martina Cole was a danger signal of some kind. I went over to the French window and scanned the garden, looking at the trees nearest the house: an apple, a fig, an ornamental cherry. Sure enough, snuggled in among the branches of the apple, I could just make out another CCTV camera. I had no doubt there were others, as well as motion sensors, possibly even outdoor alarms. I’d already clocked the fact that the Landis’s were seriously afraid of being burgled. Or worse. This merely confirmed it.
Yvonne returned, vibrant as a robin. ‘That was James!’ she said. ‘He just wanted to let me know that he’s only about five minutes away!’
Sure he did. And had taken ten minutes or so to give you a message as bland as that? Much more likely that she was warning him someone was here asking questions, maybe telling him to get his story straight. Reminding him who they were now, whoever they might once have been. Though to be fair, there was absolutely no reason to suggest that they were anything other than they seemed. Or perhaps it was just the hypersensitive gut-feeling that coppers develop when something isn’t quite kosher. Even though at first it might be hard to identify, when a case was finally sorted, that instinct always turned out to have been justified.
‘While I’m here,’ I said, ‘I’d love to see the job Mr Huber did for you. Just for our records. Callous as it may seem, I’m afraid we can’t put the company on hold.’
She jumped up. ‘Of course! Life has to go on! Follow me!’
We made our way into a sitting room decorated in traditional style but not, I suspected, by Huber Associates. A great many watercolours hung on the walls, mainly landscapes and snow scenes, though there were some photographs, too, including one of two men in open-necked shirts, with what was unmistakably Mount Fuji in the background. One of them could have been Tristan.
The room led into another, smaller room, with a stripped-pine two-piece stable door banded with black iron hinges set into one of the walls. Yvonne lifted the old-fashioned latch and led me through into a two-storey barn conversion. Like the house, it was heavily fortified with locks on doors and windows.
‘Tristan’s done a fabulous job in here!’ she said. ‘A studio down here for me!’ She gestured at the artist’s paraphernalia which littered the room. Arching beams overhead framed large windows in the roof through which the sunlight slanted in long bars. The walls were rough-cast and painted white. She pointed. ‘And another room up there!’ Rustic steps led up to a railed platform where armchairs and a sofa bed were distributed round a glass-topped table, and low bookshelves filled with contemporary novels stood against the walls. I could see a counter with cupboards above, an electric kettle, a small sink and taps. The whole of the end wall was made of glass which overlooked a panoramic view of the countryside.
‘Delightful.’ I walked halfway up the stairs and looked at the comfortable little room beyond the railings. ‘An extra guest room?’ I said.
‘Or an extra sitting room!’ My husband and I often sit up here, enjoying that breathtaking view!’
‘May I?’ I flourished my camera. ‘For our files?’
She had to think about that one for a moment, brain mentally scanning the room above for anything which might reveal any clue as to the true identity of either her husband or herself. Then she nodded. Obviously it was harmless, gave away nothing.
I dashed off a few shots and then came down to her level, and we walked back through the house to the garden room. ‘It was all entirely Tristan’s conception, too!’ she prattled. ‘At one time, we were simply going to have the barn demolished, it was such a wreck!’
‘You must be delighted with th
e end result.’ I heard the sound of a car door slamming at the front of the house, followed by footsteps, a man calling.
‘There’s James!’ Yvonne said.
James proved to be a short, rotund man with a spiky grey crew-cut, probably to conceal the fact that he was losing the hair battle in a big way. Is it better to keep some hair, just to show you did once have some, or to lose it all, and pretend that that’s the way you like it? He had a hearty manner and globular brown eyes which constantly darted hither and yon.
‘So,’ he said, rubbing his hands together like a satisfied grocer, ‘what do you think of the conversion?’
‘Both useful and beautiful,’ I said.
‘Indeed.’
‘You were at school with Tristan, is that right?’
‘No, no. Definitely not.’
‘Oh, I thought your wife said …’
‘I wasn’t sure, dear. It was before I met you.’
‘Or was it the Army?’ I asked.
‘Good Lord no. Can you see me in the Army?’
I smiled ambiguously. I was having a hard time seeing him anywhere. Nor did I want to. He was one of Nature’s misfits, entirely unconvincing as a human being, though with those thyroid eyes and spiky grey hair, on a dull day he might just have passed as a seal pup.
‘So what do you do now? You’re far too young to be retired.’
‘Import, export,’ he said, a bit too easily. A catch-all phrase which covered everything and said nothing.
‘So your relationship with Tristan was through—’
‘We were both in the same line of business.’
‘This was out in Hong Kong?’
‘That’s right. Anyway, Miss Quick, have you got what you came for?’
‘More or less. Love the barn conversion. My mission is two-fold, however, as I explained to your wife. Having been asked by the family to make enquiries about Tristan Huber, I’d just like to ask a few questions. Like where did you meet him? Not school, not the army …’
‘It was on my gap year,’ James said. ‘I was trekking round South America – Peru, Uruguay, Brazil – with the intention of working my passage across to New Zealand and Australia and backpacking round the country when I got there. Fell in with Tris in Hawaii and we stuck together for the next three months before he took off for Bali and I went on to catch my boat.’
‘Sounds like fun.’ Also sounds like a well-rehearsed story. And of course, unverifiable, all these years later.
‘Oh, it was. We were carefree, young, at least I was – he was a few years older than I. They were happy days. And, of course, I met my wife in New Zealand …’ He smiled down at the little woman, who snuggled up close. ‘So the two of us travelled along together after that. Joined up again with Tris in Sydney, did the whole Aussie Adventure thing together.’
‘Is that when you discovered his reckless streak?’ I asked.
‘Reckless?’ James looked at Yvonne.
‘You know, darling … the way he was always up for anything that anyone suggested, however risky it sounded.’ She looked vaguely panicked. ‘Climbing inside the craters of volcanoes that were about to erupt, canoeing down some of those terrible rushing rivers, swimming around when he knew there were crocodiles or sharks, climbing vertical rock-faces without ropes. I was frightened stiff by some of his antics!’
‘See what you mean,’ James said. God, he was smooth. Or well-trained. ‘Me too.’
‘Life’s a gamble, he used to say!’
One which he’d recently lost. We were silent for a heartbeat or two.
‘Well …’ I said. What I really wanted was James taped to a chair, naked, and Yvonne spread-eagled on electrified bed springs, and myself, armed with a blowtorch, a pair of pincers, torturing them mercilessly until they told me the truth (only kidding). ‘Then you moved here, saw he was a name in the interior design world, hired him to come and do your barn for you?’
‘Absolutely!’ Yvonne said, quicker on that one than her husband. I’d already picked up on the fact that she was about eight times more on the ball than James. ‘Amazing coincidence, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ll say.’ I looked around once more. ‘You’ve got a lovely house. How long have you lived here?’
‘Six years!’
‘And – not that it’s any of my business – where were you before that? You look as though you’ve been around a bit.’
‘As we said, in Hong Kong! James was with the Thai Song Commercial, weren’t you, darling?’
‘That’s right. Absolutely.’
‘When we came back to the UK, he set up on his own, didn’t you darling?’
‘That’s right. Like I said, import–export.’
I left. On the long drive home I pondered a bit. There was something fishy somewhere, and I hadn’t the slightest idea where. Despite checking the place out as carefully as was doable without being observed, I could see no trace at all as to their past. Neither the manufactured one they had handed me, nor the true one.
Glass of much-needed wine in hand, I phoned Fliss Fairlight. ‘No,’ she said, when she answered and before I could even speak.
‘How do you mean?’
‘No progress, nothing to report, leads being followed up but basically none of them seem to be helping the investigation forward, and we have absolutely no clue as to motive, let alone a perp.’ She paused. Said uncertainly, ‘That is what you rang up about, isn’t it?’
‘No. I was going to ask you if you’d like to come on an all-expenses-paid trip to Capri with me tomorrow.’
‘You so were not!’
‘Anyway, thanks for the update. There are so many directions this could go in that I can’t follow it all. But I’m not on the force any more—’
‘Come back, come back, your country needs you!’
‘—and the only resource I have which you lot haven’t is that I’ve known the vic for years. Which isn’t proving beneficial in any way. And basically, all I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks is that Tristan Huber was not what he appeared to be.’
‘Covering his tracks, do you think?’
‘I’d say so. He was obviously brilliant at his job, whatever that was. I’m inclined to think that Tristan Huber Associates was just camouflage.’ I coughed slightly. ‘Anything new on Kevin Fuller? Or that other body, with the chess pieces?’
‘Poor lad turns out to be one Ned Swift. Identity left in his pockets … second-year history student, twenty-two, popular with the girls and with his mates, president of the chess club, played the cello.’
‘No known enemies? No grudges held?’
‘So far, none at all.’
‘Any grieving girlfriends?’
‘Not that we discovered from preliminary enquiries. No one can understand what he was doing in that shed in the first place.’
‘Closet gay?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s had girlfriends, that much we’ve ascertained. I believe one of them rather tragically died … he hasn’t been on the dating scene much since then. This is all stuff we picked up from his fellow students, you understand.’
‘But there must be some connection with the Tristan Huber case, surely.’
‘Not that we’ve discovered so far.’
‘If you find one, let me know.’ A thought struck me. ‘Was he on that committee to do with refurbishing the student common rooms?’
‘Again, I don’t know. Why don’t you ring Garside yourself?’
‘Great idea, Fliss. I can just see him opening up to me, of all people. Has he checked out all those cartons in the warehouse?’
‘Ask him.’
‘I know they’re full of dodgy merchandise. Could this Ned Swift have gone there to meet a girl or something, and have stumbled across somebody up to no good and that somebody offed him so he couldn’t give away his identity?’
‘Sounds plausible. On the other hand, our perpetrator hasn’t exactly been secretive about his actions. Three bodies, now.’
‘If t
hey’re all connected,’ I said. ‘Which so far has not been established. But whether they are or not, this is becoming a bit of an epidemic.’
Phone call ended, I swallowed the last of my wine and poured another glass. ‘Cheers,’ I said to the empty room. I did not feel cheery in the least.
When Tristan was eventually exposed as whatever it was he had been, how would Dorcas and Dimsie, not to mention my own parents, or myself, for that matter, cope with the fact that they had loved him, nurtured him, laughed at his jokes? His murder was bad enough but to discover that he was anything but the saint we all thought him … what was that knowledge going to do to hearts already vulnerable, nights already sleepless?
Having removed the H from the word Tai, and then established that there was no Tai Song (goodness, that Yvonne was a bit of chancer!) but there was a Tai Sang, I put through a long-distance call to them. A helpful guy called Mr Sook, who spoke better English than I did, denied that they had ever employed a James Landis.
‘Never, never,’ he said, implying that no way would anyone called Landis be allowed through their doors, even as a depositor, let alone be taken on as a member of staff. ‘This name is unknown to me, and I have been working here for more than two decades.’
‘That’s pretty decisive stuff, Mr Sook.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I wonder where I should look next.’
‘This person you are seeking, is he perhaps a crook?’
‘I believe he is, though so far I have no proof.’
‘And you yourself are?’
‘Alexandra Quick. Formerly Detective Chief Inspector Alexandra Quick.’
‘I have always wanted to be a private eye,’ he said. ‘To catch a thief, this must be a fine and satisfying thing.’
‘Very much so.’
‘I will tell you what I will do for you, DCI Quick.’
‘Former,’ I said quickly, looking over my shoulder.’ I didn’t want to be done for impersonating a police officer.
