by Ian Rankin
The Palladio was fairly quiet in the mornings, busying at lunchtime with customers from the offices and shops, browsing as they munched on a sandwich or sipped from a carton or can. In the afternoon, a few of the regulars usually dropped in either to buy or to sell. Mr Vitalis had a good reputation with the city’s book reviewers, who would offer him the latest titles, once they had been finished with, for one third of the cover price. These books Mr Vitalis sold on to libraries and, it must be said, other bookshops. And in this way he made his money.
He kept few friends, but those he did keep, when entertained for the first time at his home, could not help but comment on its size, and on the superb works of art he had collected over the years. He would smile, and then move the conversation along to literary gossip or some commentary on current affairs. For Mr Vitalis loved conversation.
Today, however, the few regulars who called at the Palladio for an afternoon’s tea and chatter found the usual pavement stall locked up inside the shop, and the shop itself deserted, with a neatly written note sellotaped to the inside of the glass door: Apologies, friends, but Palladio closes early today. Business as usual tomorrow.
They’d never heard the like: Mr Vitalis shutting up shop early? Perhaps there was a woman behind it. After all, he was a man of the world. They were sure there would be some story in it, and surer still that Mr Vitalis would be telling the story tomorrow afternoon over tea.
Not many would have looked for Mr Vitalis in the back of a black cab, for he was known to abhor the things, always choosing to travel by Tube or bus or foot.
‘I’m a social animal at heart, you see,’ he would explain.
And while he was considered something of an aesthete, his tastes could not be said to be expensive in most areas, so some might have been more surprised still to see the taxi drop him outside a Park Lane hotel called the Achilles, where, having paid the driver, he talked animatedly for several minutes with the uniformed doorman. He then entered the hotel lobby, while the doorman stared evenly at the traffic roaring past the entrance.
Mr Vitalis looked as though such hotels were part of his everyday existence, walking up to the reception desk with a polite smile on his face and his eyes as dark as the shiniest black olives.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting a friend. I wonder, has he arrived yet? His name is Mr Devereux, an American.’
The clerk checked the register, then remembered.
‘Oh yes, sir,’ he said. ‘No, Mr Devereux hasn’t arrived yet. We have some mail waiting for him. That’s why I recall the name.’
Mr Vitalis looked surprised.
‘But I am right, am I not? I mean, he is due today?’
The clerk flipped over a page of the register. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘We have Mr Devereux’s name in for tomorrow.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Vitalis nodded. ‘I must have a crossed line then. Well, tomorrow it is. Thank you.’
And with that he turned and walked back through the lobby, pushing his way out of the main door, which he held open courteously for an elderly lady and the fruits of her shopping trip. On the hotel steps, he paused again to exchange some words with the doorman. Not many words this time, but they seemed to leave their impression, for the doorman’s cheeks were crimson with shame as Mr Vitalis walked towards the taxi rank, where he opened the door of a waiting cab, heaved himself in and slammed it shut behind him.
9
Hepton had been thinking about it all the way back to the base. So much so that when he glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw no sign of any car following him, he merely shrugged and kept on driving.
They were surprised to see him at the gate.
‘Thought you’d got a couple of days’ leave,’ one guard said.
‘Can’t keep away,’ Hepton replied, starting the car forward as the barrier rose to let him into the compound.
He parked, then went straight to Fagin’s office, a small whitewashed room next to the female toilets on the second level. There was always a faint aroma of urine and disinfectant in the room, which nobody mentioned and everyone put down to its location. But Fagin seemed happy there; some might have said disturbingly so.
Fagin, too, was surprised to see him, but admitted as much only by the raising of his thin eyebrows when Hepton walked in through the door.
‘Sit down, Martin, please.’ Hepton sat. ‘Have you seen Paul?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how is he?’
Hepton looked around the room before answering. There were photographs of satellites, spaceships and aircraft covering the walls, and three pinboards filled with postcards and other memorabilia. Then he looked towards Fagin.
‘He’s fine,’ he said.
‘Good,’ said Fagin, returning the look. ‘So what can I do for you?’
That was the question, thought Hepton: what could Fagin do for him? What was it Paul Vincent had said …?
‘Actually,’ he began, ‘it’s about Paul. He looks so fit, he reminded me it’s a while since I’ve had a break. I mean a proper break. I was wondering if I could be spared for a week or two.’
Fagin seemed to consider this. ‘Well …’
‘I know I’m not due any additional leave right now,’ Hepton continued. He was waiting for a shake of the head. Fagin hated to see people go off on holiday. Work was what he lived for, and he didn’t see why others shouldn’t be the same. So Hepton waited. He knew he wasn’t owed any holiday time, and Fagin knew it, too. Besides which, there was a strict routine to be obeyed, which meant giving four weeks’ notice of intended vacations.
Fagin’s face wrinkled.
‘I’m not sure we can spare you just at the moment, Martin. I take it you’d want your leave to start immediately?’
‘If possible, yes.’
Fagin was shaking his head, but slowly. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said again.
‘Nick Christopher could stand in for me,’ Hepton said, thinking fast. ‘He knows the set-up on my console as well as I know it myself. And Curtees could take over from him.’
‘I’ll have to think about it, Martin. I’ll try to give you an answer one way or the other as soon as I can, but no promises.’
‘Well, thanks anyway.’ Hepton made to rise, but paused. ‘Oh, one more thing, sir.’
‘Yes, Martin?’
‘Have you discovered what went wrong with Zephyr?’
‘Not yet. I’m just thankful we didn’t lose her altogether.’
‘Yes, so you keep saying.’ Hepton rose from the chair. ‘It couldn’t have anything to do with whatever else was up there, could it?’
Fagin smiled quizzically. ‘How do you mean, Martin?’
Hepton shook his head. ‘No, maybe not. I just thought that whatever it was that was up there interfering with Zephyr’s airspace might have caused the satellite to malfunction temporarily.’
‘There wasn’t anything else up there.’ Fagin seemed bemused. ‘What made you think there was?’
‘Oh, just Paul’s data. Have you checked it yet?’
‘I told you, the disk—’
‘Oh yes, the disk malfunctioned too, didn’t it?’ Hepton shook his head. ‘Well, these things happen, don’t they, sir?’ he commented archly.
‘Yes, they do, Martin,’ said Fagin coolly, watching as Hepton walked to the door and made his exit.
Hepton descended the metal stairs to the ground-floor level and walked along the corridor towards where two telephone booths were situated. As usual, one of these had a notice taped to it saying OUT OF ORDER, to which some wag had prefixed the single word BANG. But the other telephone was working. Hepton dialled directory enquiries. His call was answered immediately.
‘Hello,’ he began. ‘I’d like the number of a hospital in Grimsby. It may be the only hospital, I’m not sure.’
A few moments later, he had several numbers in the back of his diary. He drew lines beneath them all with his pen, thanked the operator and rang off. Then, finding more change in his pocket, he d
ialled the first number.
‘Hello,’ he repeated, when the call was finally answered. ‘Could you put me through to Dr McGill, please?’
It took the receptionist a little time. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, ‘there’s no Dr McGill working here.’
‘Thank you,’ Hepton said, ringing off. He felt actual relief: it would be something of an anticlimax if Vincent’s Dr McGill were to exist outside of the young man’s imagination. He called the other two numbers with the same negative result.
So there was no Dr McGill. Had Paul Vincent ever even been taken to hospital in the first place? Or had he been at the Alfred de Lyon all the time? It was a question Hepton couldn’t yet answer. He took his pen and wrote the name VILLIERS in his diary. Another figment of Vincent’s imagination? A second visit to the nursing home was becoming absolutely necessary.
Two hours later, Hepton was playing pool with Nick Christopher when the internal note arrived. He read it out aloud.
‘“Leave can begin at once. Send us a postcard. Henry.”’
Christopher came to see. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘he really signed himself Henry. Fagin never uses his Christian name. Never.’
Hepton wafted the note in Christopher’s face. ‘Now will you believe that something’s going on?’ he said.
He had spent the past half-hour trying to make sense of his suspicions to Nick Christopher, but it seemed that the more he talked, the flimsier everything became. But now this. The granting of an immediate holiday, courtesy of Fagin.
Courtesy of Henry.
Christopher returned to the table and played a shot, but it went wide of the pocket and he sighed, putting down his cue.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Run through it again for me, starting at the beginning.’ And this time he was concentrating as Hepton told his story.
10
Hepton went to his dorm, pulled a suitcase out from beneath one of the bunks and started packing. Nine months ago, he’d taken out a year’s rental on a small flat in the market town of Louth, plumb in the middle of the town’s market area and not far from Binbrook. He’d reckoned it would make a little love nest for Jilly and him, whenever they could find a couple of days or more free to spend together. But then she’d taken the London job, forsaking her own local paper, where she had been something of a star. There had been a murder, made to look like suicide, and Jilly had investigated. She hadn’t exactly been able to prove anything substantial, but she had goaded the police into taking another look, and from there they had pronounced the suicide a murder. From where it was a short step to declaring the murderer (the dead woman’s son) found and guilty (twelve years).
Jilly’s story had found its way into the national press, and then the London Herald had jumped in with the offer of a job. Of course she’d been right to take it. It was the perfect career move at the right time. So the flat had gone unused and unloved, but Hepton had kept it on, using it for the occasional tryst, more or less unsatisfactorily.
He didn’t pack much, just enough to make people think he really was going to take a holiday. Then he waved farewell to Nick Christopher, who waved back, and made for his car.
At the security barrier, the guard came out of his hut.
‘Off again, are you?’
‘That’s right, Bert,’ said Hepton, smiling.
‘I don’t know, some people …’ Bert went back to his post.
Hepton waved at him, too, as he drove underneath the rising barrier and took a right turn onto the main road. Louth was less than twenty minutes away.
There had been a market that day, but the only signs in the town centre were scraps of vegetables in the gutter outside the entrance to Hepton’s flat. He lifted his suitcase out of the car and unlocked the main door. There were three flats in the house: one on the ground floor, one on the first floor and another in the attic. His was the first-floor flat, and he took the winding stairwell with accustomed awkwardness, manoeuvring the suitcase around the twists of the climb.
There was no mail waiting for him on the matting that covered his hall floor. The neighbour downstairs, Mrs Kennedy-Hall, had a key to the flat and sent the mail – bills always – on to him at the base. He unlocked the door. The flat smelt musty. He hadn’t been here in over a fortnight, and then only to play the gigolo in a failed seduction.
The place looked tidier than he remembered it. They had drunk a lot of wine that night, and rather a lot of neat gin (there being no tonic water to hand). None of it had helped. He couldn’t remember clearing up afterwards, though. Perhaps Mrs Kennedy-Hall … But no, it would be more her style to hire someone to tidy.
Then he heard the sounds, at first placing them in the street below. The sounds of running water, of things being moved, breakable things. There was someone in his kitchen …
He ran towards the source of the noise and stood in the kitchen doorway, dumbstruck. At the sink stood a tall, attractive woman, perhaps a year or two younger than him. She had rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse and was up to her elbows in soapy water. Clean dishes stood on the draining board, the worktops shone, the whole place was sparkling. The woman turned, saw him and smiled.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You must be Martin.’
‘That’s right,’ Hepton said at last. ‘And who the hell are you?’
‘Harriet,’ she answered, letting the water out of the sink. ‘My friends usually just call me Harry.’ She dried her hands on a dish towel, then held out the left one towards him. There were no rings on her water-reddened fingers. ‘How do you do?’
Hepton shook her hand awkwardly, right-handed himself, and she noticed his hesitation.
‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I’m always doing that – shaking with the wrong hand, I mean. Sorry.’
‘Not at all,’ said Hepton. The shock of finding a stranger in his flat, a breaking-and-entering charlady, was ebbing. Questions filled the space. ‘But who are you?’ he asked. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Care for some tea?’ Harry had turned her back on him and begun to fuss with the kettle.
Hepton stared down at her legs, supple, slim legs wrapped in thin black stockings. She wore a blue pinstripe skirt to just below the knee. It was half of a suit, the jacket of which he now saw was hanging over one of the chairs beneath the freshly wiped foldaway table.
‘There’s today’s milk in your fridge,’ she was saying, ‘and some Assam tea in the cupboard. The place was quite barren. I hope you don’t mind. I went to that little shop on the corner.’ She turned to smile at him, and despite himself, he smiled back.
‘I think you should know—’ he started.
‘Oh,’ she interrupted, sniffing the interior of the teapot speculatively, ‘but there’s very little I don’t know, Martin. Very little indeed. That’s why I’ve been sent along here. Do you take milk?’
‘Who sent you here?’
She smiled again, with her unblemished English rose of a face, then waved an expansive arm around the kitchen.
‘All neat and tidy,’ she said. ‘That’s how I like things. I can’t remember, did you say you took milk?’
‘Yes,’ he said, beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. It was difficult to find an order for all the questions welling up within him. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Didn’t I say?’ She began pouring water from the kettle into the teapot. ‘Your door was open.’
‘Open?’
‘Wide open. No breaking and entering necessary. Well, no breaking at any rate. So I suppose the worst I can be accused of is cleaning with intent.’ She had placed everything on a tray, which she now double-checked. Satisfied, she lifted it. ‘Shall we go through to the living room?’
There was little Hepton could do but follow her, knowing that he needed answers but knowing also that she seemed determined to give them in her own way and in her own time. Well, he had lots of time, didn’t he? He was on holiday. All he needed was patience.
They sat down and she poured, handing him a cup.
G
od, he hadn’t used this tea set in living memory, preferring a chipped red mug. It had come with the flat, the tea set. But then so had the mug.
‘I thought it was odd,’ Harry continued, ‘your door being open like that, so I called in to report it. I’ll pay for the call, of course.’
‘Called in to whom?’
‘To my employers,’ she said, ‘who are, ultimately, your employers. It’ll be useful to keep that in mind.’
‘Why?’
She chose to ignore this, lowering her fine eyelashes as she sipped from her cup. Hepton drank too, playing her at her own game. The tea was strong and aromatic. Harry put down her cup and crossed her legs.
‘You saw your friend this morning. Paul Vincent. And now your little holiday begins.’
‘That’s right.’ Then it hit him. ‘And you,’ he said, ‘drive a black Ford Sierra.’
She smiled, but did not reply.
‘You were following me?’ he said.
‘Why were you so anxious about Mr Vincent?’
Hepton shrugged. ‘It’s no secret. Paul was taken ill. He’s a friend of mine, as you yourself said. So, naturally, I was worried.’
‘But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?’ Her voice had taken on a hard, professional edge. He stood up.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got no proof that you are who you say you are – not that you’ve said very much.’ He walked to the window and stared down into the street. An old man was stooping to pick up a discarded piece of fruit from the side of the road.