I’d visited Craig Andrews once when I was editing his first novel. He had a three-bedroom house on a quiet street with residential parking and lots of trees. He had converted the basement into a spacious kitchen and dining area with French windows opening onto a patio. The ground floor was given over to a study/library and a sitting room with a widescreen TV on the wall and an upright piano. The bedrooms were further up on two more floors. Craig had plenty of female friends but he had never been married so the taste was entirely his: expensive but restrained. There were books everywhere, hundreds of them on shelves that had been designed to fit into every nook and cranny, and it goes without saying that anyone who collects books can’t be all bad. It might seem strange that someone whose work included graphic descriptions of gang violence and the lengths – or depths – to which women would go to smuggle drugs into jail should have a fondness for romantic poetry and French watercolours, but then it had always been the elegance of his writing – along with its authenticity – that I had admired.
I was the one who had discovered Craig. At least, I had believed the young agent who had recommended him to me and after I had read his manuscript I had snapped him up immediately with a two-book contract. His first novel came with the title A Life Without Mirrors, which was actually a rather marvellous quotation from Margaret Atwood: ‘To live in prison is to live without mirrors. To live without mirrors is to live without the self.’ It was also the first thing I changed. His book was well written but it wasn’t literary fiction and Craig certainly wasn’t interested in the sort of sales that, unfortunately, go with that territory. Jail Time may have been crasser, but it was short and sharp and looked good on the cover. As he’d told me in his email, he’d been doing time ever since.
He greeted me at the door, dressed in his trademark T-shirt and jeans with, I noticed, bare feet. I suppose anyone who has spent twenty years in banking has earned the right to go without a tie or socks. He was forty-four, I remembered from his biography. He looked younger. He belonged to a local gym and he used it. He had the sort of cover photograph that helped sell books.
‘Susan! How great to see you.’ A kiss on both cheeks. ‘Let me help you with that bag. Come on in.’
He showed me up to a comfortable room on the top floor. It was built into the eaves with windows overlooking communal gardens at the back; certainly a step up from the Premier Inn. There was an en-suite bathroom with one of those showers that squirt water in every direction, and Craig suggested I might like to use it and change while he put on the kettle. We would both be out that evening. He was going to the theatre. I had dinner with James Taylor.
‘I’ll give you a spare set of keys and show you where the fridge is and after that you’re on your own.’
It was good to see him again, a reminder of the life I had managed to mislay in the course of my involvement with Alan Conway. I unzipped my wheelie and pulled out my clothes, along with the purchases I’d made in Woodbridge. I’d transferred them to the case when I got out of the car; there was no way I was going to turn up on his doorstep looking as if I’d just been to the sales.
Even so, I was a little uncomfortable as I laid everything out on the bed. Part of it was a feeling I often get when I stay in other people’s houses: a sense of crossing a line, of intrusion. It was one of the reasons I had decided against asking Katie to put me up. Had I really come here to save the cost of a couple of nights in a cheap hotel? No. That wasn’t fair. Craig had invited me and I hadn’t seen any reason not to accept. It would be more pleasant than being on my own.
But I had definitely felt a pang of guilt when I’d called him and now, glancing at my laptop, which was also on the bed, I knew why. I was engaged to Andreas. We might have postponed the wedding but we hadn’t completely called it off. The diamond ring was back in the shop, but there were other diamond rings. So what was I doing in the home of a man I barely knew – moreover, a man who was wealthy, single and about my age? I hadn’t mentioned any of this to Andreas. What would I have said if he had gone sneaking off to some Athenian lovely? How would I have felt?
Of course, I reminded myself, nothing was going to happen. Craig had never shown any interest in me, or the other way round. But it probably didn’t help that even as these thoughts went through my head I was standing in his shower, enjoying, incidentally, the sort of water pressure that we had never been able to achieve in Crete. I felt exposed in every way. I wondered if I should FaceTime Andreas and tell him where I was. At least it would remove any hint of betrayal. I was on business. I was earning ten thousand pounds, which would all go into the hotel. With the time difference, it would be eight o’clock in Crete, dinner time for the guests even though the locals preferred to eat much later. Andreas might be helping out in the kitchen. He might be looking after the bar. He must have read my email by now! Why hadn’t he FaceTimed me?
The laptop was still sitting there accusingly when I came out. I decided to give it another day before I emailed him again. Craig was waiting for me downstairs and it would be rude to keep him waiting too long. And maybe I didn’t want to talk to Andreas. He was the one who needed to talk to me.
I put on the new cocktail dress and a pair of simple silver earrings I’d bought myself in Crete. A final dash of perfume on each wrist and I went downstairs.
‘You look great.’ Craig flicked off the kettle as I came into the kitchen and poured boiling water into a glass teapot with big, authentic-looking leaves. He had also changed, into a long-sleeved shirt. And he had socks on as well as shoes. ‘It’s white tea from Sri Lanka,’ he continued. ‘I was at the Galle festival last February.’
‘How was it?’
‘Wonderful. Except that any writers who upset them, they tend to throw in jail. I shouldn’t have gone.’ He brought two cups and saucers over to the table. ‘And on the subject of jail, did you write to Stefan Codrescu?’
‘I’m still waiting to hear from him.’
‘So what’s that about?’
I told him about the book that Alan had written, about Lawrence and Pauline Treherne and their visit to Crete, about Cecily’s disappearance. I did my best to make it sound less like an adventure with me as the plucky heroine on the trail of a killer. Maybe I was thinking of what Richard Locke had said to me in Martlesham Heath. Cecily Treherne, a mother with a young child, could have been murdered while she was out walking her dog. There was no doubt that Frank Parris had been beaten to death eight years before. It was all too easy to trivialise these two events, to make them sound merely entertaining. That wasn’t why I was here. I wasn’t Atticus Pünd. My job, I explained, was to read the book and to see if I could find in it anything that might help.
‘How well did you know Alan Conway?’ Craig asked.
‘Well, I published his first novel, the same as yours,’ I said. ‘You were a lot nicer, though.’
Craig smiled. ‘Thanks.’
‘I mean it. In the end I worked on nine of his novels and I loved them . . . at least until I got to the end.’
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’
I had no choice. After all, I had accepted his hospitality. I told him everything, aware of the passing of time only from the fact that at some stage we moved on from white tea to white wine.
‘That’s an extraordinary story,’ he said, when I had finally finished. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘You nearly got yourself killed while you were investigating. And now you’re doing it a second time? You’re suggesting that someone may have murdered Cecily because of what she knew. Couldn’t the same thing happen to you?’
Katie had said exactly the same thing and I gave him the same reply. ‘I’m being careful.’
But was it true? I’d had meetings with Aiden MacNeil, with Derek Endicott, with Lisa Treherne and with Martin and Joanne Williams. I’d been on my own with them and any one of them could have been lying to me. Any one of them could have beaten a man to death with a ham
mer. The nanny was creepy and even the detective was vaguely threatening. These certainly weren’t the sort of people I should be mixing with, but how could I get anything out of them without trusting them, at least to some extent? Maybe I was putting myself in danger after all.
‘Have you reread the book?’ Craig asked.
‘Atticus Pünd Takes the Case? Not yet. I thought I’d start it on Monday.’
‘Here – you can have my copy if you like.’ He went over to a bookshelf and returned with the new edition in his hand. ‘Someone bought it for me, but I’ve still got the old edition upstairs. Unless you’ve already got one . . . ?’
‘No. I was going to buy it.’
‘Then that’ll save you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘I may not see you later. The play doesn’t finish until half ten.’
‘Why don’t you let me buy you dinner tomorrow night? I haven’t asked you anything about your writing or your new publishers and all the rest of it. I take it you’re not married or anything?’
‘Good God, no!’
‘Then let’s go somewhere local. If you don’t mind me staying a second night.’
‘Not at all. I’d like that.’
He left ahead of me and it was only after he had gone that I realised what should have been obvious from the start. With his neat beard, his dark skin and his brown eyes, Craig reminded me very much of Andreas, several years younger and wealthier – in every respect in better shape. The thought was an unworthy one but it was true. I’ve always been attracted to a certain type of man and it occurred to me that if Andreas was the reality, Craig was the ideal.
But I was with Andreas.
I took an Uber into town. There would have been nowhere to park my MG so I’d left it in a car park near Ladbroke Grove station. It took me half an hour to get to Le Caprice.
And all the way I thought of Craig.
Le Caprice, London
The last time I’d had dinner with James Taylor, the two of us had got very drunk together and I was determined it wasn’t going to happen again – certainly not at the sorts of prices you pay at Le Caprice. I’d only ever been there once – Charles Clover, my boss, took me for my birthday and that wasn’t a relationship that had ended well. The food was great, but what I remember was everyone staring at me as I crossed the room. It’s impossible to reach your table without being seen, which may be the point for half the people who eat there but it doesn’t work for me. I prefer places that are more anonymous, where I don’t feel I have to be on my best behaviour. I wondered why James had chosen it. It was certainly a step up from the Crown in Framlingham.
He was ten minutes late and I was beginning to think he was going to stand me up when he came bounding in, shown to our table by a waiter who seemed to know him well. It was two years since I had seen him and as he crossed the room I thought he looked exactly the same. The long hair, the baby face with its contradictory stubble, the eyes full of enjoyment and enthusiasm, though with just a hint of something sly around the corner . . . I had taken an immediate liking to him when we’d first met at Abbey Grange and hoped I would feel the same now.
But as he sat down, apologising about the traffic, I saw that something wasn’t quite right, that he looked tired, strained. He had been partying too late, drinking too much and possibly taking too many drugs – he had the classic looks of a sybarite, and if there was something Byronesque about him, I had to remind myself that Lord Byron was dead, killed by sepsis, at just thirty-six. He was dressed in the same black leather jacket and T-shirt that he had always favoured, although the brands were more expensive. As he raised a hand to order champagne, I noticed a gold bracelet and two rings that hadn’t been there before.
‘Susan, it was such a surprise to hear from you! Dinner’s on me and I won’t hear of any argument. How are you? I heard you got hurt when you were trying to find out who killed Alan. That’s awful! It’s hard to believe that he was actually murdered. I wonder what he would have thought of that! It probably helped sell the books.’
I relaxed. His appearance might have changed but James was still very much his old self. ‘I don’t think he’d have been too impressed,’ I said. ‘He didn’t much like murder stories.’
‘He’d have liked being in the newspapers. We often used to talk about how many inches he’d get. In his obituary, I mean!’ He hooted with laughter, then grabbed the menu. ‘I’m going to have scallops and steak and chips. I love the food here. And I want to hear everything that happened. Why was Alan killed, exactly? Who had he upset? And how did you get involved?’
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ I said, thinking that I’d already gone through it all with Craig and was beginning to feel fed up with the whole thing. ‘But first I want to hear about you and how you’ve been getting on. Are you acting in anything? The last time we met, you said you were going back to drama school.’
‘I did apply to RADA and Central but they weren’t interested in me. I’m probably too old and debauched. Anyway, my heart isn’t really in it and I’ve got so much money now I don’t need to work. Did you know that we sold Abbey Grange for two million quid? I don’t know who’d pay that much to sit in a field in the middle of sodding Suffolk, but I’m not complaining. Alan’s books are still selling and they keep sending me royalty cheques. It’s like winning the lottery except it happens every six months.’
Alan Conway had been married. He’d had a child with his wife, Melissa, but six months after the publication of Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, he had come out as gay, the two of them had divorced and eventually she’d moved to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire. For at least one year during their relationship, Alan had taken to using rent boys. He’d picked them up in London in the early days of the Internet, when cards in telephone boxes were slowly being phased out. My dinner companion had been one of them.
James had spared no details telling me about their time together – the sex, the surreptitious travel to France and the USA. I’d actually found his shamelessness quite endearing. Alan had employed James as his ‘researcher’ and I’m sure all the money he was paying – effectively for sex – he had claimed as a tax-deductible expense. After the divorce, James had moved in with him, although the twenty-year age gap hadn’t made things easy for either of them. James Fraser, who turned up in the fourth novel as Pünd’s sidekick, was based on him; a slightly kinder portrait than the one Conway had inflicted on me. He had appeared in every book until the end.
We ordered our food. The champagne arrived and James told me about his new life in London. He had bought himself a flat in Kensington, which was where he had been living before. He travelled a lot. He’d had a series of affairs but now he was in a serious relationship with an older man, a jewellery designer. ‘He’s a bit like Alan, really. It’s funny how you always end up going back for more of the same.’ His partner, Ian, was encouraging him to settle down, to do something with his life, but he couldn’t decide what.
‘Did you know they’re making the TV series of the first Atticus Pünd?’ he told me.
‘When do they start shooting?’
‘They already have. They’ve got Sir Kenneth Branagh playing Atticus Pünd and I’m an executive producer!’ He beamed with pleasure. ‘I’m not in the first book, but if they make all of them, someone will end up playing me. I’ve suggested Ben Whishaw. What do you think?’
After the first course – and the food was delicious – I reluctantly steered the conversation back to Alan Conway. It was, after all, the whole point of the meeting. That meant giving him a quick rundown of everything that had happened since Crete. He had read about Cecily Treherne’s disappearance in the papers but it hadn’t made much of an impression on him. He was much more interested in Alan’s involvement in the original murder and when I told him the name of the victim, he took me completely by surprise.
‘I knew Frank Parris,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘How do you think, darling? He fucked me . . . quite a few
times, as I recall.’
The tables at Le Caprice are quite close together and I noticed the couple eating next to us turn their heads.
‘Where?’
‘In London! He had a flat in Shepherd Market – not far from here, actually. I never liked having clients in my own space. I usually went to hotels. Nice and anonymous. But Frank wasn’t in the closet. Far from it! He’d take you to restaurants and clubs and show you off to his friends before he took you home.’
‘Why did he use rent boys?’
‘Because he could! Frank had a taste for young boys and he could afford to pay for them. He wasn’t into marriage and partners and all that . . . or maybe he was but he never admitted it. Anyway, he was quite kinky. It might not have been easy to find a partner who wanted to do the sort of things he liked.’
‘What sort of things?’
The words had slipped out before I could stop them but James wasn’t embarrassed. ‘Humiliation, mainly. Dressing up. A bit of bondage. I met quite a few men like that. Out to give you a bad time . . .’
The people at the next table were listening with interest.
‘How did Alan meet him?’ I asked, deliberately lowering my voice and hoping he would do the same.
‘I don’t know exactly but it wouldn’t have been difficult. There were plenty of bars in London, or it could have been in one of those Chariots places. You know – a bathhouse. We actually had a foursome once – me and Alan and Frank and Leo. I’m talking about dinner, by the way! Not what you think! I got the impression that Frank was Alan’s spirit guide, if you like. Alan was still very unsure of himself, his sexuality, and Frank encouraged him along the way.’
‘Who was Leo?’
‘Another rent boy. Like me.’ James still hadn’t lowered his voice and I was aware of a certain hush at the other tables around us. I’m sure this wasn’t the usual sort of conversation you’d hear at Le Caprice. ‘A lot of us knew each other,’ he went on. ‘We didn’t exactly socialise, but it helped to know if there were any weirdos out there . . . pretty policemen, that sort of thing.’
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