The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  Prisca returned from her visit to Victor without success.

  ‘I was sure, as a woman of colour, I was going to get something out of him when no one else could. But he didn’t change his story.’

  ‘He adored Julian,’ I said. ‘They had this thing going. He told her everything, at least… I now wonder whether anything she ever said was true. She used to tell me all these stories about Victor and his family. I suppose they weren’t fabricated. What’s his house like, his family?’

  ‘The house is very ordinary from the outside, one of those semidetached Edwardian places in Camberwell. Inside it’s crammed with furniture, very neat, highly decorated in colourful taste. His wife is white, called Mary, a retired nurse. We all sat in their front room and his granddaughter watched a video of Little Women with her thumb in her mouth.’

  ‘I saw them at the trial. I used to hear how Mary and the daughter, what was she called, Josie, used to quarrel. They used to have the most appalling rows, apparently.’

  I was carried back to journeys with Julian in taxis, coming home from a restaurant or a film, holding her hand, hearing the next episode of Victor’s life, a row between Josie and Mary, Rose’s birthday party, the dog. Did they ever get the dog? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps that part of the story was interrupted. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I made an appointment. I explained who I was. He didn’t make any difficulty about seeing me. He was happy to talk. I let him go on about you, about her. I learned a lot.’

  “What about?’

  ‘You both. He was – is – very fond of the two of you. He admired her, was in awe of her in some way. But the way he described her, reading between the lines, enraged me. She was an emotional tyrant, one of those cold, controlling women who will always find a slave. You were such a bloody fool, Nicholas.’

  ‘You’re quite wrong. She wasn’t cold at all.’

  Prisca made an angry sound of disagreement, like a suppressed sneeze. ‘He regretted what had happened. To you and to her.’

  ‘That’s what did for me at the trial. It was so clear that he didn’t want to harm me; he just couldn’t help it. Did you learn anything new? Did he admit that he went out for a smoke and was afraid to tell anyone?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. He just reminisced about her. When I brought him round to the night of the murder he broke down in tears, insisting he would have done anything to help her, but there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing so far, but we’re still working on it. God, look at the time. All this way for an hour together.’ Prisca had failed, but my own flippant words, spoken to conceal my pessimism, awoke a cascade of memories. Victor. Igor. Julian and Igor. It was not just that last night, all the other nights had to be accounted for. Why could Victor never remember having seen Igor? If I had not seen Igor myself, lying on Julian’s bed, I might have concluded that all her stories were false, and that Igor had never visited the apartment at any time, so Victor would never have had a chance to see him. But I knew Igor had been there; indeed, he must have had his own key. Victor must have seen him. If he didn’t recall him, it was because he didn’t want to.

  ‘It’s better not to ask,’ he’d once said. When had that been? I relived my intense curiosity about Julian in those early days. I remembered my attempts to find out something about her, my frustration with Victor’s reticence.

  ‘Some people pay us not to talk,’ he’d said.

  Then I saw it all. Victor’s co-operativeness, his reluctance to do harm, his apologetic visit when I was on remand, had distracted me from seeing that he was under as much pressure as Colin Trevor. He was paid not to see and not to talk. And the person who had paid him was not Julian, nor even Anatoli, but Igor. Once I had made this connection, everything fell into place. I waited impatiently for Prisca’s next visit.

  ‘I’ve understood about Victor.’

  ‘Wait, wait. What about Victor?’

  ‘Victor was paid. He was paid not to talk. He told me once…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s not a man who is reluctantly telling the truth; he’s someone who is reluctantly lying. He was paid to keep his mouth shut and it must have been Igor who paid him. Right at the start he would never answer my questions about Julian. He even tried to warn me off; I see that now. Once he told me that some of the residents tipped him to protect their privacy, to stop him being tempted to speak to journalists. At least, that’s what I took him to mean. I see now he meant something much more specific.’

  Prisca was looking thoughtful. ‘And why do you think it was Igor who paid him?’

  ‘Work it out. It has to be Igor. Anatoli couldn’t have cared less. He liked to be seen with Julian. When I was shut up with him in Moscow, the thing he mentioned about Julian was the sensation she used to cause when she walked into a room. That’s what he kept her for, as far as I could see.’ I laughed. ‘It wasn’t sex; he thought she was cold; like you.’

  ‘With more evidence for his opinion,’ said Prisca.

  ‘I remembered Victor’s expensive tastes. Victor always drove good cars, bought expensive clothes. I expect he lavished things on his granddaughter. There was more money there than there ought to have been.’

  Prisca agreed to speak to him again. She made copious notes in her huge handwriting, covering page after page of her tiny notebook.

  ‘Will this make a difference?’

  ‘Who knows? With other things, it could tip the balance.’

  44

  Prisca arranged for Victor to come to the Lords because she wanted to tackle him alone, without the presence of Rose or Mary. She intended to overawe him with grandeur and hoped that the authority of the place would reinforce her cross-examination. He had seemed less willing to be helpful than the first time, but, when she persisted, he had conceded to the interview. So she heard the story of Victor and Igor, and Rose and Sleepy, which even Julian had never been told.

  They met at the entrance gate where he was checked by security. She led him up the winding stairs to her office, invited him to sit down and made coffee for him on her little machine. Victor was, as usual, dressed for the occasion, but ill at ease, fearful of what was to come.

  Prisca gave him milk and sugar and, handing him his cup sat down in front of him. I could imagine her leaning forward, ignoring her own coffee, resting her jutting chin on her angled palm and telling him straight out, ‘Victor, I’ve asked you to come here like this because I wanted to talk about something that I am sure you would prefer Mary and Rose not to know about.’

  Victor’s gaze flashed upwards and then slanted down, not looking at her.

  ‘I’ve been making some enquiries of my own, quite separately from the police or anyone else, and I now know all about what happened.’ She waited to see what he would do, whether he would deny it to the end. ‘And I know that you have been paid over a long period never to mention Igor.’

  Victor’s reaction had been low key, but nonetheless striking. It was a sign of his dislike of dishonesty that he did not resist, or perhaps a sign of his terror. He said nothing, setting down his coffee cup with a hand that was perceptibly trembling. A sheen of sweat spread over his forehead and cheeks and he leaned back in his chair. Prisca was aghast at the success of her techniques of interrogation. She feared that he was about to faint, or worse, to have a heart attack and hastily ran out to find him a glass of water. He took it from her and drank it, slowly, while his breathing slowly adjusted itself to a normal rhythm.

  ‘It wasn’t the money,’ he said at last. ‘I never did it for money. I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘Will you tell me about it?’ And he did.

  ‘I met Igor when Julian and Anatoli first moved in. They were such a nice couple. I always liked them. She was lovely, well, you know all about that. She always chatted to me, asked me about the family. He was sort of commanding, do you see what I mean? He had that smile, didn’t he, white teeth under his moustache, as if he’d eat you. Igor was different; you d
idn’t see him. I remember the first time he came, almost as soon as they arrived. Anatoli was away. He, Igor, had to ask what floor and I thought, all these Russians, they’re all over the place now, do you see what I mean. But after that I didn’t really notice him again.’

  Igor was simply one of the hundreds of familiar faces, friends and relatives of the residents of the block, which recurred, passing from the front door to the lift. But he had special needs. He had to be able to go in and out discreetly. He wanted to know if Anatoli was in, had arrived back unexpectedly. He needed Victor. It started easily enough. Victor was used to husbands, wives, lovers, who wanted tasks done with discretion, things delivered, messages or parcels taken, guests let in or out without any comments made to others. Igor required the same services.

  ‘He was an odd one. I could never make him out. And what did she see in him? I never thought there was anything between them, you know, sex. But I couldn’t understand why he always came when Anatoli was away. In the end I thought perhaps she was in the same boat as me, he had some hold on her. We never talked about it, but I think she understood.’

  Igor had paid well, too well. His tips came in brown envelopes, thick wadges of dollar bills, which Victor had been canny enough to change at hundreds of different banks over the years, so that he never set up a routine that could identify him. But Igor demanded a standard of loyalty, a commitment that Victor would never betray him, that could only come from fear.

  ‘He was a bit like the Arabs,’ Victor said, ‘who didn’t know the value of money, who were right out of scale. We’d had an Arab prince living there a few years back, who’d had six bodyguards and three or four servants, just for one man. Every time he left the country his private secretary gave money for us porters. He used to come down and leave this envelope full of fifty-quid notes.’

  But that had only happened once or twice a year. Igor’s gifts were frequent, secret, for Victor alone. The first two or three envelopes he had received with glee. He had patched up his car, had it serviced; sent Mary shopping up West; bought some toys for Rose. But the dollars kept on coming and he couldn’t understand why.

  ‘All he wanted was news of Julian. He used to ring as soon as he arrived in London and I had to tell him where Anatoli was and what she was doing. “He’s away, expected on Saturday, sir. She’s on her own.” Or “He’s here today. Shall I let her know your number?” I’d say.’ He felt uneasy. The money was too much for the services performed, so Victor knew it must be a lien on the future; something that Victor might not want to sell. The next time he tried to refuse. When Igor came through, stopping at the desk to slip the envelope under his book, he pushed it back.

  ‘No, no, sir. It’s too much. Really. Anything I can do, any time. It’s no trouble.’

  Ignoring what he said, Igor was already on his way to the lift. Determined to release himself from the trap he was in, Victor handed the envelope back to him when Igor left in the early hours. The Russian held the envelope in his hand, his eyes glazed, as if he needed time to recognise it

  ‘That was the first time I realised he drank. He never showed a thing, never stumbled, never spoke funny. But he was far gone, man.’ At last he said, ‘OK. If that’s the way you want it. But you’ll change your mind.’

  Victor got up from his chair at this point and Prisca watched him walk behind her to the window, to look out over College Green and St Margaret’s church.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘By car, I have a parking… Oh you mean, get here.’

  ‘Yes. You, there can’t be many like you here.’

  ‘It’s long story. In the first place I married someone, that got me started. Then I worked. I was lucky and one thing led to another.’ ‘But you had education. You can tell you had education.’

  ‘Yes, I had that.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I want for my granddaughter. I want her to be someone. My daughter, Josie, she never liked school, left as soon as she could. She never had no ambition. But Rose. I don’t know how Igor knew about Rose. He was spooky, he knew things no one never told him.’

  Julian, I thought, Julian would have told Igor, just as she told me. One day, soon after this, Josie collected Rose from her nursery school at the end of the morning, as she always did. She was a bit late; that was usual, too. On the way home they popped into the Seven-Eleven to buy some bread for lunch. Josie had brought the dog with her, a dirty white poodle-cross called Sleepy, to give it some exercise. She was towing dog and child along the pavement towards their house, when they stopped at a crossing, idly waiting for a car. Instead of driving past, or even stopping to let them go, it drew up alongside them and two men got out Josie had not foreseen danger.

  She didn’t recognise them, but she took them to be friends of her boyfriend, come to find her. An instinctive coquettishness had made her straighten her back, thrust out her bust, as they approached. Without hesitating in front of her femininity, they seized child and dog and bundled them into the back seat. In seconds, the revving car had made a u-turn and driven off. Josie had been left hysterical on the side of the road.

  The twenty-four hours that followed were the worst of Victor’s life.

  ‘I didn’t go into work. I didn’t sleep or change my clothes. I couldn’t understand who could’ve planned the kidnapping. But they were coloured, the guys that did it, and that made me think that my money had got them envious, do you see what I mean. I thought if I get her back, and I have to take money from Igor again, I won’t spend it no more. I’ll save it like, for Rose. I looked everywhere for her; I was frantic. I telephoned everyone I could think of, preachers, pub- owners, trying to find out who done this thing. I drove from one bar to another; I walked the streets. But I didn’t go to the police. I was afraid, you see. I thought about those dollars; some of them were still in a shoe-box at the back of a cupboard in my bedroom.’

  A day later Rose was found playing on the slide in a local park. She had approached a woman who was watching her own children and said she wanted her dinner now. She had recited her address and been led home. There was no evidence that she had been harmed in any way. Some mild questioning had produced the report that she had found the people who had looked after her ‘nice’. She spoke approvingly of the pizza she had been given for her tea.

  Sleepy had been less fortunate. Her body, the throat cut, had been returned by a separate route. Victor found her in his locked car that evening when he opened the door to set off for the night shift. The killing had indelibly soaked the interior with blood. Red paw marks on the side window marked the death throes. He still did not realise whom he was dealing with. He still expected some kind of demand for payment, and instructed Mary and Josie not to go out, not to answer the phone, above all to keep Rose inside.

  He only understood that night when, at about one in the morning, Igor left the apartment building.

  ‘How’s your granddaughter?’ he had asked.

  ‘I felt a cold hand squeezing my heart,’ Victor said to Prisca. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’

  ‘She’s OK,’ he managed at last.

  ‘Good, very good. Let’s keep her so.’ And he tossed the same envelope onto the desk.

  After that, he had never doubted that if he ever revealed anything about Igor to anyone, his granddaughter would be killed. He had kept his part of the bargain until confronted by Prisca’s powers of persuasion.

  When I next saw Prisca she told me the whole story in detail.

  ‘They were an exceptionally nasty bunch you got yourself mixed up with.’ In an English context, the death of a dog was more shocking than the gunning down of a bodyguard in Russia. ‘It may be enough to get you out of here,’ she said. ‘It’s evident that he was under pressure and lied to the court. We may also have got a witness to Igor. My detective lady is on the track of a taxi driver.’

  This character took form and flesh later in the week. I phoned Prisca who told me that they had now discovered the mini
-cab driver who had delivered Minna to the square, a Maltese driving a Sierra estate car for Central Cars.

  The detective work had been meticulous, worth every penny, Prisca averred. The investigator, a woman, had waited on several days outside Minna’s flat in Hampstead to discover if she habitually used the same taxi service. On identifying the mini-cab company, she had been able to trace the journey made to Knightsbridge on the murder evening. She had noticed, with excitement, in the company’s records, that the driver had picked up a fare immediately after dropping Minna at 20.09 hours, and taken him to Waterloo, depositing him there at 20.27 hours. She then contacted the Maltese driver who was understandably somewhat hazy about the evening in question now months ago. Once he had identified the day as the evening before his daughter’s eighteenth birthday party, he had summoned up some vague memories. He thought it was a man who had approached him. He hadn’t really seen him. He might have been wearing a light raincoat The fare had bent down and spoken to him through the near side window and then got into the back of the car. He hadn’t seen where he had come from. He could have come from out of the same building which Minna had entered, but he could have just been walking on the street. He might have had a foreign accent.

  ‘Not perfect,’ Minna said on the phone. ‘But pretty good. Someone, roughly answering Igor’s description, left the square immediately after Minna’s arrival, and the journey and times are logged in the cab company’s records.’ She was jubilant.

  We had uncovered another web of motivation and action, but I had little hope that it would produce any change in my circumstances. I had in any case accepted my situation.