Birth Marks

by Sarah Dunant

  I called first, but only to check they were still at the same address. Nobody tells you anything on the phone, and I always think of myself as more impressive in the flesh.

  The girls manning the Potential desks were a little less stylish than the decor, but they had that air of confidence that comes from one day personnel management courses and operating on commission. There were two ways to play this, the truth or deceit. Why pick one when you could have them both?

  ‘Well, I really don’t think I can help you. You’d better see Mrs Sanger, the manager.’

  Mrs Sanger was a little older, a little more haute couture and a lot more on the ball. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve certainly had no communication with the police over this matter.’

  ‘Of course not. I’m just doing some preliminary work to help them with their inquiries.’

  ‘But you’re not a policewoman.’

  ‘No, I’m a private investigator.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Wolfe. All our records are confidential.’

  Oh well, brick wall. I thought about all the other ways I could try and get around it. Like joining the police or coming back after dark and breaking in to search the files. Crime had already got me a long way in this case, but Potential would almost certainly have better locks on their doors, not to mention an alarm system. I decided to stick with the verbals. ‘You do realise, Mrs Sanger, that this is a murder inquiry we’re talking about.’

  ‘But I thought the papers said it was suicide.’

  Gotcha. ‘The police have reason to believe otherwise. There were certain, how shall I put it…“suspicious circumstances”.’ And I made the last two words positively tactile, like a twirl of the villain’s moustache.

  ‘I see,’ she said, quietly, meaning, of course, that she didn’t. I left a pause.

  ‘So you do remember the girl?’

  ‘Yes, well I read something about it, of course.’

  ‘And she did answer the advertisement.’

  ‘Er…yes, I seem to remember she may have done.’

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you that the police might be interested in knowing that?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Almost a year now. Quite frankly, I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  ‘Even though she got the job.’

  All right, so it was just a flashy hunch. According to Scott, Carolyn hadn’t got past the first interview, but then she’d spent years lying to Miss Patrick, why not a few white whoppers to others? There was a small silence. Probably Mrs Sanger’s course had been longer than the others. She smiled. ‘I still don’t see what difference that would have made.’

  ‘Mrs Sanger, according to the pathologist’s report it is clear that Carolyn Hamilton conceived the child she died carrying during late April. Obviously any connections she would have made around or before that time are important. I appreciate the rules of confidentiality, but in the circumstances…’

  Without the make-up and the fancy clothes I would have put her at about thirty-two or thirty-three. Younger than me and less used to this kind of encounter. I wouldn’t say that was the deciding factor, but it probably helped.

  ‘All right, Miss Wolfe, what do you need to know?’

  ‘A description of the job and some kind of contact address for the client.’

  She tried to look as if she was still making up her mind. Then she nodded slightly.

  ‘As for the job, I seem to remember that it was a temporary post, some kind of personal assistant to a French businessman. We were given a questionnaire to ask the girls, and after some basic vetting we faxed the best results along with photographs of potential applicants to an office in Paris. That was the end of our involvement.’

  ‘And Carolyn was one of the girls whose particulars you faxed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did she get the job?’

  ‘I have no idea. We put in the ad, saw the girls and passed on a short list. I don’t believe we had any further contact with the client.’

  So much for the day’s second hunch. ‘Isn’t that rather unusual? I mean, aren’t you usually paid for finding the right girl?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not always. Different clients use different methods. In this case we were paid for vetting the applicants, not filling the post itself.’

  ‘And you weren’t at all suspicious?’

  ‘Of course not. We were employed to do a job and we did it.’

  You could see she thought we had reached the end of our conversation. I wasn’t sorry to disappoint her. ‘Were you given any idea of what the job involved? I mean the ad read a little vaguely for a personal assistant post.’

  She looked at me for a moment, then smiled. ‘Business is a complex industry these days, Miss Wolfe. A high-powered head of an important firm may have more than one personal assistant, you know; someone geared to office work, another to managing his social calendar, entertaining overseas visitors, the press, that kind of thing.’

  She made them sound more like heads of states than producers of steel or sanitary towels. As a child of the seventies I still have trouble adjusting to this new capitalist utopia, where it’s not what you do but how much you earn doing it that defines status. Speaking of which…‘The advertisement also mentioned “exceptional money”. Is that true?’

  ‘I seem to remember it was very well paid, yes.’

  ‘You seem to remember a lot of things about it.’

  ‘It was just before I became manager. I was the person who handled it.’

  ‘So you interviewed her?’

  And she frowned slightly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How was she?’

  She thought about it. ‘She was a good candidate. Very attractive, bright, nice personality, a sense of adventure.’

  Carolyn Hamilton redrawn as Cosmo woman of the nineties: gorgeous, self-confident and afraid of nothing. It has to be said, some people really let their jobs get to them. Still you can’t be too careful. I filed this character description along with the rest of them.

  ‘The perfect woman for the job, in fact?’

  ‘I don’t know. My memory is that the advertisement attracted a lot of attention. She wouldn’t have been the only one they might have seen.’

  ‘So can you give me the Paris contact?’

  She nodded and stood up. ‘It’ll take a minute or two.’

  Out through the glass wall Potential was hard at work, busy fitting square workers into round holes. I had been a temp once, pouching money during long winter months so I could spend the summer footloose and fancy free on some exotic Greek island. At least that had been the fantasy. In reality the money earned was never enough and I ended up typing chemical reports for a multi-national while London sweltered outside my window. I watched a middle-aged woman struggle with the plate-glass door, then hesitate in the entrance, wondering which bright young thing to approach. She looked in need of a job and therefore probably wouldn’t get one. I tried to imagine Carolyn Hamilton in her place. A personal assistant to a French businessman. It didn’t seem quite the thing for a dancer who went to animal rights rallies. Still, she had her own national debt to think about. The need to find eight thousand pounds can affect anyone’s choice of career. Was it my imagination, or did Mrs Sanger look a little less poised on her return?

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t seem to have the records easily available.’

  ‘It’s not a problem. I can wait.’

  ‘I’m not sure that would help. They don’t seem to be in the correct file.’

  ‘I see. What about a copy of the questionnaire and a list of the girls you vetted.’

  ‘All the information would be in the same place.’

  ‘And what about your own notes?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. Some of them I would have transferred to the file, the rest I would have thrown away.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that you have no record at all of the job?’

  ‘That does seem to be the case, y
es.’

  I registered a small tingle of exhilaration in the pit of my stomach, but didn’t let it show. What the body feels the mind doesn’t always agree with. And the mind was still working.

  ‘What about your fax records?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You said you faxed details to the Paris office. Wouldn’t you have records of that number on your bill covering that quarter?’

  Cross fertilization, it’s called. Taking information gained in one job to use in another. To be honest it impressed almost as much as it flustered her. Fax records. Telephone bills. This was not the stuff of creative personal management. If indeed such records existed, she would certainly not be able to release them without permission. And permission would mean passing the buck. But not with me in the office.

  Left alone again this time I looked the gift horse in the mouth. Why not? I went through the drawers of her desk quickly, one eye on the office outside, the other on the contents. Drawers, I have discovered, are a lot like handbags: they can tell you a great deal about their owners. Mrs Sanger was obsessive about her nails and she had a back-up Filofax just in case life got too full for the first one. Among the many things she didn’t have was the file for the Paris job. But there was a separate contacts book. Above her desk was pinned an impressive list entitled ‘USEFUL NUMBERS’ so it seemed unlikely that she had to keep continually digging about in her drawer. It was small and red and could easily have got mislaid down the back of a filing cabinet or in the lining of a briefcase. Or the pocket of a private investigator. The whole thing took thirty-four seconds. I know because I counted. When I started doing this job I took tips from everywhere, books and bad movies included. Nimble fingers and speed were the lessons learnt. But how do you know how fast you are unless you time yourself? In my experience even the shortest of phone calls takes at least a minute.

  Mrs Sanger’s took longer. I was sitting reading last November’s edition of Jobs and Management when she came back in. She didn’t look hopeful.

  ‘Company policy, I’m afraid. Obviously if and when the police require it they could get in direct contact with head office and they will process the request, but until then…I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’

  I got up. ‘And there’s nothing more that you can tell me?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ she said with admirable speed and efficiency.

  I did the ‘Well, if you can remember anything that might be of any help’ routine, gave her a card and left.

  I spent the next hour and a half sitting in rush-hour traffic jams. When I got home it was past seven and I was shagged. I had a dim recollection that there was something I should be doing that evening, but I didn’t know what it was. I decided not to bother trying to remember. Instead I made myself a doorstep sandwich and went through her book. As far as I could see there were six French numbers. Four of them turned out to be agencies, with their answering machines on, but then it was after eight in Paris. The fifth, which had the word Etienne next to it, was engaged, no matter how often I called. And the last, which was Jules B something, wasn’t answering at all. I gave up for the night and settled down to a little detecting homework.

  I’ll run it by you just in case you still harbour any illusions about the mystery of the process. The first thing is not to get too excited. After all, every minute of every working day a hundred files get lost in a million highly efficient filing systems; all perfectly innocent human error. But, once in every million there’s a mistake that is deliberate. So let’s say this was that one in a million. First question—who? Second question—why? Mrs Sanger didn’t immediately seem the kind of lady to let conspiracy interfere with efficiency, and anyway why should she want to destroy the files of what was—according to her—a perfectly ordinary lucrative job? On the other hand, why hadn’t she released the fax records? Had she really called the boss or just stood with her mouth to the receiver and her finger on the bridge? I thought about that one for a while but got nowhere. So say she was above board. Who else could want to destroy the file? Carolyn Hamilton herself? That one got the detecting juices flowing nicely but it was pure speculation. All I knew for certain was that Carolyn had got pregnant, disappeared, then put a lot of energy into concealing where she had gone. But would she really have gone to such extreme lengths as destroying the file for a job she may not even have got? Or spending seven months in Paris sending postcards home from London. If, that is, she had. If…That’s the trouble with detecting, it’s like travelling round an Escher landscape: you think you’re going in one direction only to meet yourself coming back the other. I started to backtrack. To humbler beginnings. Fact: around the time of conception Carolyn had been Channel hopping. And at least one of those hops had been for an interview. Conclusion: even if she didn’t get the job I should talk to the people who interviewed her. Which brought me back to the beginning and the little red book.

  The phone broke the vicious circle. As soon as I heard her voice I remembered what I’d forgotten.

  ‘Christ, Kate, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re getting as bad as Dad. I thought in your line of work it was important to remember things.’

  ‘I can be there in twenty minutes, will that do?’

  ‘I suppose so. There’s food, you know. You haven’t eaten, have you?’

  ‘No, no, not a thing. I’ll see you…Oh, and Kate—I forgot to buy him a present. Is there…?’

  She laughed, which was pretty sisterly in the circumstances. ‘Don’t worry, he still hasn’t read the copy of Spy Catcher from last year. Why don’t you stop by an off-licence and make it liquid form. I think he’d digest that quicker.’

  It could have been worse. At least I had something to wear. The feel of the Hong Kong silk brought back Mrs Van de Bilt, who had bitched about the half hour it had taken me to do some shopping of my own, but the suit made me look almost elegant, and a generous helping of duty free Chanel dispelled any hint of the Colindale public library about me. I picked up a bottle of Jamesons on the way and arrived twenty-five minutes after I’d put down the phone.

  The evening was already in full swing. In the living-room the velvet curtains were drawn and a coal effect fire burned merrily, proud of its ability to fool most of the people some of the time. There were little bowls of green olives stuffed with pimentos and tiny canapés clustered together on lace doilied plates. I had forgotten how grown-ups live. Usually when I visited we stayed in the kitchen and ate off the table with the kids. Despite all the noise the house seemed quiet without them. Caterers slid in and out like well dressed shadows, leaving Kate to play hostess. I’d seen her looking better. The baby had a cold and she’d been awake most of the night blowing its nose, or whatever it is you do for a stuffed-up infant. But she had put on a brave face. And a beautiful dress. Not so much flash as fitting in. I wondered how long I had to stay for my exit not to appear rude. I whiled away a Martini with Colin’s partner, a man with a red knitted tie and architect’s glasses, who regaled me with some fascinating stuff about the corporate redesign of the Metropolitan Police, and how making police stations more design conscious places would improve relations between the police and the community. I stored it all away for a rainy day when I really wanted to get up Frank’s nose. A youngish man with an active Adam’s apple joined us. If we thought police stations were bad, we should see the BBC. Talk about Reithian grime. Maybe better office design would give us more balanced programmes. The red knitted tie loved that idea. I thought about trying to introduce a line of weak liberalism into the conversation, but decided I had better things to do with my brain.

  Across the room I saw one of the black and white shadows approach Kate. They talked for a moment then Kate left. If I caught her quickly I could make my excuses and slide out before the buffet opened. But when I got out to the hall she was not there. I walked up to the first landing, and called her name. From Benjamin’s room I was greeted by a wall of sound: great gulping sobs of indignation and fury as if the world was endi
ng then and there in his bedroom. For a panicky moment I thought I might have woken him. I ran up to the first floor and stood outside the closed door. There were pauses in between the sobs now, but they might just have been gasps for breath. I opened the door quietly and went in. Kate was standing with her back to me, near to the window, silhouetted in the glow of a night light. The baby was cradled over her shoulder, yelling, although already less hysterical. She was talking to him, a river of comfort delivered in a private, sing-song little voice. And he was listening, even through the sobs you could see that.

  ‘There, little goose, that’s better, isn’t it? See, there’s nothing to cry about. Mummy’s here. You’re all right. Nothing is going to hurt you.’ Benjamin shivered in her arms, swallowing tears and air together. He let rip with a few more giant sobs but you could feel that his heart wasn’t really in it. ‘I know how you feel, little man. It’s awful when you can’t breathe properly, isn’t it? But it’s just a cold, that’s all, and I’m here to make it better.’ He nuzzled his head into her shoulder, and gradually his body grew stiller. The cries turned to whimpers and finally stopped. He slept while Kate rocked on her heels, to and fro, one hand rubbing his back. I felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if I had stumbled across some unexpected sexual intimacy between friends. I moved to go out, but she heard me and turned. She motioned me to stay while she lifted the sleeping baby off her shoulder and put him down in the cot. He whimpered a little as he settled himself, but then seemed to fall instantly into a deep sleep. We stood for a moment watching him. With the crying wrinkles smoothed out he was suddenly the cherub child again, all cushion cheeks and silent-night peace: so powerful and so helpless at the same time. It was the kind of combination that might drive an intellect mad, if, that is, the instinct weren’t hooked already. Funny how you can see it all from the outside.