by Roy Lewis
The young man turned, smiled with an affected shyness. ‘Of course, if you’re interested in something even more sophisticated—’
‘I’m a police officer.’
‘What? Oh, sod it!’
The two men stared at each other. The blue eyes had changed; the professional innocence was still there but now shadowed with chagrin and embarrassment. The young man seemed to regard Grout’s presence as an unfair intrusion; he was disturbed at his failure to recognize danger when it loomed up in front of him.
‘I can usually spot the fuzz at a distance of half a mile,’ he complained.
His tone was aggrieved. Grout shrugged. ‘I’m not too happy myself, being taken for one of the dirty mac brigade.’
‘Don’t go any further,’ the bookseller interrupted, holding up a warning hand. ‘You know as well as I that there’s nothing harmful in pornography and it’s a mistake to classify all readers of erotica as sad, semi-deranged, hole in the corner, sexual fanatics. I like it myself, in fact,’ he added rather gloomily. ‘Sex, that is. I don’t really go in for erotica.’
‘You sell it,’ Grout challenged.
‘It’s a way of making a living.’
‘You’re Philip Proud, I imagine.’
The blue eyes took on an expression of surprise. ‘Yes, I am! How did you know my name? I don’t use it in this business. Fallacies Unlimited. I would have used a different spelling but that would have appeared too in-your-face, and advertising might have been a problem. With objections from the rest of the Shambles, I would guess, too.’ Philip Proud grimaced his dissatisfaction.
‘And you deserted the academic world for this stuff.’
‘That sounds like an echo from someone else I know.’
Grout glanced about him. It wasn’t a good idea talking like this in the shop itself. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? Other than here. I don’t imagine you want everyone to know you’re being interviewed by a police officer. Bad for business, I would have thought.’
‘And I suppose erotica makes you uncomfortable. I can understand that. But it’s only a part of life.’ Proud wrinkled his nose. ‘But you’re right. Some of my clients are easily embarrassed – even scared. I have a room upstairs that serves as an office. We can go there.’
Grout looked back to the room they were leaving. ‘What about your present customers? Aren’t you in danger of their stealing something if you’re not around to watch?’
‘I know most of them … apart from the kids. And they’re not really purchasers, or thieves. They just like to stand there, read a while, dream, mentally masturbate. … Would you like to follow me?’
Proud led the way to a narrow staircase that took them to the upper floor. The office they entered was neat, and on the desk was a monitor that gave a view of the main room below and the front door. Proud was not as casual as he tried to make out; he could see what was going on downstairs while he was up here in the office.
‘So,’ Proud said as he perched one thigh on the edge of the desk, ‘you from the vice squad, or what?’
‘No. I’ve no interest in the tools of your trade.’
‘No interest in erotica? So why are you here?’ Proud asked.
‘I’d like to talk to you about your thesis.’
There was a short, puzzled silence. ‘My thesis? Why? It wasn’t about sex in Rome or anything like that. I did include a few comments about some of the explicit statuary that was commonly held in respectable Roman homes, but there was nothing in it about erotomania or anything like that.’
‘I told you, your selling of erotic literature – if that’s what you call it – has no interest for me. I’m simply interested in why you deserted the academic life and—’
‘Hold on! This’ll be Professor Godfrey! He knows something about this. Nice chap, Godfrey, and he was very helpful to me when things got difficult. But he’s somewhat narrowly-focussed. He got more than a bit stuffy about me opening this shop, felt I ought to have a crack at some academic posts, but teaching was never going to be my main aim in life. I’d had enough of it, the experience at university held bad vibes for me, this was a release into a world that erected a sort of buffer against those outside. My aunt of revered memory provided the means by popping her clogs after remembering me in her will. I set up the bookshop here, with that money. I don’t make much of a living but I’m immersed, you know? Perhaps you might consider I’m hiding from my hidden psychological urges, my repressed desires or something, but who knows?’
‘I’m no psychologist,’ Grout admitted with a slight smile.
‘No. Just a copper. I wonder what your hidden desires might be? You—’
‘Never mind my hidden desires. Let’s stick to the point. I understand that in your researches into mediaeval Italy you spent some time at Chesters Fort.’
There was a slight pause before Proud replied. ‘That’s so … though the two weren’t really connected, except in a small way. But I don’t—’
‘Did you carry out any recording work in the storeroom there? Did you make a list of the holdings, for instance?’
Proud folded his arms and glared at Grout. Suddenly, his eyes were harder. ‘What’s this all about? Why are you harassing me?’
‘Harassing? You think this is harassment? I’ve hardly started yet,’ Grout admitted calmly.
‘I don’t see why I should go over my past life for you.’
‘And I see no reason why I shouldn’t swear out a warrant about some of the stuff you’ve got here,’ Grout countered.
‘It’s not illegal!’
‘I never said it was. But we could cause you trouble, looking just in case you were holding something … really nasty. Paedophilia, for instance. Really dirty books.’
Proud held up his hands. ‘All right, all right, let’s not get touchy. You want answers. So just ask the questions.’
Grout smiled thinly. ‘Good. So I’ll ask you again. Did you make a list of the items in the Chesters storeroom when you worked there?’
Proud shrugged. ‘I did. Well, to a certain extent. Items that interested me. But it was a while ago. I think I still have the list but I can’t be sure. Let me think …’ He moved around the room, soft-footed, twisting his lip. He stood before a tall cupboard, opened the door and stared at the piles of folders, binders, and dusty account books. ‘A lot of this is stuff already here, kept from the time when I took over. I’ve not dared touch it in case it all falls on my head. We need a woman’s touch in this business. Fat chance, with my luck with women. But … I have a feeling, a vague recollection that I might have stuffed the list up here, on the top shelf.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Grout. ‘I suppose you would have imagined I kept whips and leather stuff and dildos and other sex toys, that sort of thing here. Secreted away. But I’m a seller of books, not a practitioner. Just old files …’ Dust floated down upon him as he reached up to rummage in the documents on the top shelf. He drew some down, inspected them, shook his head. ‘Wrong. Not here. But … ah, of course!’
To one side of the cupboard was a wooden trunk of ancient vintage. He bent down and opened the lid.
‘This was my grandfather’s when he himself went to university,’ Proud explained. ‘I remember now, all the bits and pieces I had left when I left the university, I stuck it in here.’
‘Your thesis?’
Proud shot a sharp glance in his direction. ‘My thesis? No. But … I guess you’ll have already heard I lost it in a fire.’
‘Professor Godfrey told me something about it. Yes. How did that happen?’
‘Long story.’
Grout sighed. ‘That’s what the Professor said. But he gave me a short version.’
Philip Proud pondered for a few moments. Then he grimaced. ‘I don’t know whether he ever believed my story. But no matter, he’d seen my work, supervised the writing while I was doing the research and he made out a case in my favour with the Senate. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have been awarded my MA.’
Grout glanced down the main room of the bookshop. ‘Not that you need it here.’
‘You’d be surprised, my academic achievements provide a veneer of respectability for some of my customers. Persuades them they’re not really kinky, to think of their bookseller as someone with a respectable academic background, a Masters degree no less.’
‘I can see that. But let’s get back to the loss of your thesis. Professor Godfrey said you claimed it was the result of vandalism by a bunch of students.’
Proud was leaning over the trunk and busily foraging inside its recesses. ‘Something like that. Well, not exactly. You see, I was going out with this girl at the time. Pretty steady, really. I spent that particular evening at her flat, a rather crummy place on West Road, and I got back in the early hours to find my place had been ransacked.’
‘Did you suspect it was a burglary?’
Proud glanced at him, shrugged. ‘Maybe. But I had a theory … You see, this girl I was dating, she’d been hitched up with this other guy for two years before she threw him over and started going out with me. He wasn’t pleased, and when I got back to the flat and found the place had been turned over and my thesis destroyed, well, I thought of him straightaway. My laptop had gone as well, so I thought if I went straight over to his place and confronted him maybe I’d get the laptop back at least. So I charged over there, two in the morning, hammered on his door, we had a right old barney but he denied everything … and there was no laptop. Anyway, I still suspected he had a hand in the business, but now, I’m not so sure …’
‘The girl?’
‘He married her a year later. C’est la vie. Hey, here we are. The very thing you’re looking for, though God knows why! Voila! The storeroom list. I wonder why I ever bothered to keep it.’
Proud had drawn from the depths of the trunk a faded notebook which he flourished under Grout’s nose. Grout took it from him and inspected a few pages.
‘It appears to be just a lot of scribbled notes.’
Proud stretched and yawned prodigiously, then scratched at his nose as though annoyed by dust arising from the trunk. ‘Yeah, well, I think you’ll find what you seem to be looking for towards the back. The notes are some of the preparation stuff I did for my thesis. In the end that was about all that was left after the thesis and the laptop disappeared. There was some other information I kept for a while but after I got the MA award confirmed I threw it out. Don’t know why I kept that notebook in fact. Overlooked it, I guess. Anyway, is that what you want?’
Grout checked the last few pages of the book, and nodded. ‘May I take it away with me?’
‘Hang it on your wall for all I care. It’s yesterday’s news as far as I’m concerned.’ Proud eyed Grout for a moment then allowed a mischievous smile to touch his lips. ‘But like I said before, there’s far more interesting stuff in the back room, if you have that sort of inclination. …’
With the notebook safely stowed in the glove compartment of his car, Grout took the road to Beverley. He had little difficulty finding Paul Gilbert’s house, it was a large, rambling, Victorian building, probably a former vicarage, standing on a corner where three lanes met and it commanded a pleasant view of the countryside around the town. Whether Gilbert made a good living from his photography Grout had no idea, but it was clear that the man lived in a certain style. The house was expensive, in a sought after area. The car wheels rasped over a gravelled drive as Grout drove up to the front door. The garage stood to one side of the house; its doors were open and the garage itself empty.
Grout parked, got out, locked the car and made his way up to the front door. He rang the ornately framed bell. He could hear the sound echoing within the house but no one came to the door. He tried again but there was still no reply. It seemed the house, as well as the garage, was unoccupied. Gilbert was not at home.
Grout waited, considering. He could go back to the office or he could wait here a-while in case Gilbert turned up. He checked his watch and decided he would wait a little while, rather than return to York. He used his mobile to ring in to the office in York and left a message there for Cardinal, explaining he was waiting. A few minutes later he received a text message to say that the chief inspector had gone to Sheffield.
He sat on a bench in the front garden for an hour, enjoying the pale sunshine, and casually flicked through the pages of the notebook Philip Proud had given him He saw nothing there that might have been important. He wondered what Cardinal was up to.
James Cardinal had been met at Sheffield railway station by a police car. He had decided to go there from Newcastle after receiving a phone call from the Sheffield CID.
The car took him swiftly away from the city centre and along the Glossop Road. It went past two sets of traffic lights, turned right, and slowed as it approached a street of houses that had been built perhaps eighty years earlier but which had now been turned into self-contained apartments, one up, one down. The gardens in front of the houses were in various states of disuse. There were already two police cars parked outside one of the houses, towards the end of a cul de sac. A small group of people stood to one side, craning for a view, gossiping, and there was a ripple of excitement as Cardinal’s car arrived. As far as he could see, no journalists so far. That at least was a bonus, he thought sourly. Cardinal got out of the car, ignored the throng and entered the house where a uniformed policeman was standing impassively on guard. As he entered the corridor leading to the downstairs flat, he was met by an officer of the same rank as himself.
‘Where is she?’ Cardinal asked, dispensing with any ceremony.
The Sheffield officer directed him towards the bedroom. The body awaited his inspection.
She lay on her back, half on and half off the bed. Her arms were thrown back across the rumpled coverlet and her knees had buckled where she had slid downwards in the struggle. Death had not been kind to her, it had ripped away her beauty. Her hair had been torn out at one side of her head and the bare patch was stained with coagulated blood. The skin along her jaw line had been scratched as though a sharp instrument had scored its way across her skin, possibly a ring. But it was the belt that had killed her. It was a cheap plastic belt, black in colour, shiny, an accessory Cardinal assumed might have been used on a woman’s dress. But this belt had bitten cruelly into the woman’s throat, effectively cutting off air to her lungs. As she had been strangled to death her tongue had forced its way out between her teeth, and there was a trickle of blood on her left cheek where those teeth had clamped down in agony on her tongue.
‘Do we know who she was?’ Cardinal asked.
The officer at his shoulder looked at him. ‘My name’s Carlton. Chief Inspector. You’re DCI Cardinal, I gather.’
When Cardinal glared at him Carlton raised his chin. ‘Nice to know who one is talking to, no?’ His voice was clipped, educated, no trace of a Yorkshire accent. ‘Yes, we think we know her identity. Her name is … was … Eloise Parker, it seems. There’s evidence she used other aliases, in addition. I’m told she was a photographic model, whatever that means, though it might well have been a cover for a whole host of activities as we all know. There’s some evidence she was legitimate, though how successful, one doesn’t know.’
‘Doesn’t one?’ Cardinal could not resist asking.
Carlton raised a dismissive eyebrow but did not rise to the bait. ‘We’ve found a list of her contacts in the modelling world. It includes some reputable people. There’s a scrapbook too, with some shots of her that were taken a few years ago. Not very much that’s recent, so maybe she’s been on the slide for a while. That, or there’s the possibility she’s been concentrating on other activities. What exactly, I wouldn’t know, but one can hazard a guess… . Modelling and entertaining clients, we’ve seen the slide happen often enough, haven’t we? But I was advised to call you. …’ There was an edge of hostility creeping into his tone. ‘Call you, because she answers the description put out from Morpeth. The Northumberland police told me you’d be inte
rested in this one. As far as I’m concerned, you can have it if you like. Never did like dealing with murder inquiries.’
Cardinal decided to capitulate to some extent, he was off his regular patch in any case. He took out a cigarette case, extracted a cigarette and offered one to Carlton. He rarely smoked these days, and even more rarely on duty, but there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He was hoping he could have questioned this girl. She wouldn’t be able to tell him anything about events at The George Hotel now.
‘This girl … Parker, you say? So she checked into The George Hotel under an assumed name… I gather you found some connection with the dead man, Rigby.’
Carlton had refused the offer of a cigarette and was staring coldly at the one that remained unlit between Cardinal’s fingers. ‘This is a crime scene. I don’t think it’s a good idea if you smoke.’
‘Of course. Sorry.’ Cardinal returned the cigarette to its silver case.
‘Yeah, we found a link. There’s a bunch of letters in the bureau, unpaid bills, usual stuff … but there’s one or two items which suggest Rigby is the man who was paying the rent on this flat. We’ll check further, of course, but it looks like Rigby had set her up here. For obvious reasons, one would guess. All fairly recent, though.’
Cardinal took a deep breath. He nodded. ‘And how long has she been dead?’
‘The signs are it happened some time yesterday, but you know what forensics are like: they’ll never give you a straight answer until they’ve gone through everything and thought it over. So, no precise time, but maybe early last night.’ He hesitated, chewed at his lip. ‘We do have a few other leads to follow up, even so.’
‘Such as?’
The Sheffield CID man stroked his chin thoughtfully, and grimaced. ‘Well, we know she was getting ready to go out somewhere when her visitor called. According to her diary, she had two appointments set up by a modelling agency. When we contacted them they told us she had cancelled the appointments, told them she’d be out of touch for a while. One of the staff at the agency told me early this afternoon that enquiries were being made about her and an address was given out, but for some reason no record was kept of the caller … it was done by phone. Slapdash, when you think about it. After all, how can the agency keep tabs and earn its money?’