‘Of course I remember,’ said Lou. ‘A very classy-looking dame.’
‘I loved her flat,’ said Sally. ‘Especially the egg chair.’
‘It’s very uncomfortable,’ said Max. He wanted them to know that he’d been in his daughter’s apartment and sat in her chair.
‘I just wanted to ask you about some other girls you might have photographed,’ he said. ‘Do you remember a Louise Dawkins? She was saving up to be a nurse.’
‘Coloured girl?’ said Sally. ‘Yes, I remember her. She was a real beauty. Lovely skin.’
‘Do you remember a Rhonda Miles or a Sara Henratty?’ Max had got the names from Edgar and committed them to memory. He was still good at learning lines. ‘Rhonda’s a redhead and Sara’s got dyed blonde hair. Both aged about sixteen.’
‘Can’t say I do,’ said Lou. ‘And sixteen’s too young for us. Unless they’ve got their parents’ permission.’
‘You’d be surprised how many of them do have their parents’ permission,’ said Sally. ‘Mothers coming along asking us to take topless pictures of their daughters.’
‘Do you take topless pictures?’ asked Max.
‘Sometimes,’ Sally answered coolly.
‘How do you get your models?’ Do you scout for them in the street?’
‘We don’t need to,’ said Sally. ‘You just put pictures in the right magazines and the girls come running. Celebrities are different. We only got Ruby because of Joe.’
Joe looked down modestly but Max was struck by the words ‘we only got Ruby’. Who else had got Ruby? Lou seemed impatient with the conversation. He reached out and turned on the radio.
‘The television actress Ruby French has been reported missing.’ The words reverberated against the wallpaper, tiles and fake grass.
It felt very strange hearing Bob’s voice coming out of the wireless. Emma had, by and large, got used to her former colleague’s promotion. Part of her was actually pleased for him; she’d got on well with Bob when they worked together and they had been through a lot, one way or another. But another smaller, meaner voice said, ‘What’s Bob done to deserve being the DI? All he’s done is stay around all these years, plodding along, keeping his nose clean. It should have been you.’
Emma tried to silence the voice by turning up the volume.
‘We are investigating the possibility that the disappearance of Ruby French is connected to the earlier abductions of Rhonda Miles, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, and Louise Dawkins, a nineteen-year-old student nurse. We believe that we are dealing with an extremely clever individual, one who is capable of planning and executing an audacious kidnap.’
Edgar had told her of his plan to ‘open a dialogue’ with the kidnapper, to flatter him and force him to show his hand. Emma could see the logic of this but it still felt wrong to hear the words coming out of Bob’s mouth, or rather out of their transistor radio, a recent and much-prized purchase. For one thing, Bob would never use the word ‘audacious’.
Emma gave the transistor a cursory sweep with her feather duster. She was tidying up because Sam and Harry, the photographer, were coming later that afternoon to interview her. ‘The editor likes readers to see the wife at home,’ Sam had told her, putting aural quotation marks around the word ‘wife’. ‘He says it gives the piece an intimate feel.’ Emma looked around the sitting room. It looked intimate all right, Sophie’s colouring things all over the floor, Edgar’s newspaper open by his chair, Johnny’s playpen with its weird collection of objects including a saucepan and the spare back-door keys. The girls would be home when Sam arrived which meant that they’d hang around asking silly questions and getting overexcited. Marianne would be sure that the photographer would want myriad pictures of her in her ballet dress.
She hadn’t told Edgar about the interview or about her own plan to flush the kidnapper out into the open. She was sure that he’d be embarrassed by the first and would disapprove violently of the second. So why was she doing it? Emma asked herself this question sternly as she pushed the carpet sweeper up and down. It was partly because she wanted to do something. She couldn’t just sit at home being the supportive wife behind a successful man. But she had to admit (and Emma was as good at examining her own motives as she was at guessing those of criminals) that she also wanted to prove that she was a better detective than Bob, better than the entire Brighton force, in fact. Certainly better than Meg Connolly who had made such an important breakthrough with the tunnels and was, in Edgar’s words, ‘heading for great things’.
Maybe you are, Meg, thought Emma, as she carefully ranked Sophie’s crayons in colour order, dark cyan to palest pink. Just make sure you don’t get married first because then your career will be over before you can say ‘wife and mother’. She must have spoken the words aloud because Johnny laughed and said something that sounded remarkably like ‘Mama’.
‘It’s OK for you,’ said Emma, picking him up and cuddling him. ‘When you grow up you can be anything you want. Policeman, doctor, journalist, actor, prime minister. Anything.’
She thought suddenly of Jonathan, Edgar’s brother, for whom the baby was named. What would he have done with his life if he hadn’t died at nineteen, on the beach at Dunkirk? Being a man did have its drawbacks after all. She held her son tightly while he meditatively wiped his sticky fingers in her hair.
Meg and DI Willis were on their way to Crawley. They had found an address for Howell Davies’s ex-wife, Beryl. Meg was glad to have another chance to interview someone. Maybe the DI was starting to appreciate her skills after all. On the other hand, it was still quite a strain making conversation with him. Maybe she shouldn’t even be trying. Maybe she should just be sitting in subservient silence. She wished there was a radio like in American cars.
Crawley was a new town between Brighton and Gatwick Airport. The development had started after the war and new streets were still being added, rows and rows of identical houses all with their own neat strip of garden. Meg, who was meant to be map-reading, kept sending them down one-way streets.
‘Little boxes,’ said the DI contemptuously, executing what felt like a twenty-five-point turn. ‘There’s no soul in places like this.’
Meg thought it looked rather nice.
Mrs Davies’s house, when they finally located it, was in a road by the park, very clean and quiet, smelling of privet hedges and newly cut grass. Meg thought of how much her parents would love this, instead of their terraced house in Whitehawk with its view of the gas station. You could almost be in the country, apart from the distant, and rather soothing, sound of traffic.
Beryl Davies’s first words were, ‘I don’t want any trouble. People round here don’t know about Howell.’
‘There won’t be any trouble,’ said the DI. ‘We’d just like a few words.’
‘What do you think you’re doing? Turning up on my doorstep with a woman dressed up as a policeman.’
‘I am a policeman,’ said Meg. Beryl looked like she wanted to refuse them entry but maybe she thought it was better to get them out of sight because she reluctantly ushered them into the house.
‘I haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘I work at the new Sainsbury’s on the high street. My shift starts in an hour.’
‘It won’t take long,’ said the DI, taking a seat in the immaculately tidy sitting room. Meg perched on the edge of a chair, feeling as if she was taking up too much space.
‘We’re anxious to speak to Mr Davies,’ said the DI. ‘He’s no longer at his boarding house and doesn’t seem to have left a forwarding address.’
‘I don’t know where he is,’ said Beryl, sitting up very straight. ‘I divorced Howell as soon as he went into prison. I haven’t seen him since. We’ve never had anything like that in my family.’
‘He went into prison for fraud, didn’t he?’ said Meg. ‘Trying to dodge his creditors by giving different names,’ said Beryl. ‘I didn’t know anything about it. He lied to me too. Said his father was a lord when he really worked down a mi
ne in Wales. A fantasist, that’s what they said in court. I should have known. He was an actor and that’s what they are, isn’t it? Liars. Always pretending to be someone else, putting on different voices, making up stories.’
‘It must have been hard for you,’ said Meg.
‘It was,’ said Beryl. She didn’t relax exactly but some of the stiffness seemed to leave her body. She leant back slightly in her chair. ‘I come from a respectable family. My mother refused to talk to me when Howell was arrested.’
That was friendly, thought Meg. She couldn’t imagine her own family disowning her in similar circumstances, although her mother would say that she’d seen it coming, because that’s what she always said.
‘And you’ve no idea where Howell could be now?’ said the DI, obviously wanting to get back on track. ‘Have you got an address for the family in Wales?’
‘I’ve got it somewhere,’ said Beryl. ‘But I don’t think he’s there. His father’s dead now and his mother’s a bit doolally.’
‘What about other friends?’ asked Meg.
‘I don’t think he kept in touch with anyone after he went inside,’ said Beryl. ‘All his actor friends dropped him. His agent wouldn’t even return his calls.’
‘Well, if he does get in touch,’ said the DI, ‘can you telephone us on this number?’ He scribbled on a card. ‘We’re anxious to talk to him.’
‘What’s he done?’ said Beryl, with only a flicker of interest.
‘We’re not sure yet,’ said the DI.
‘You shouldn’t have gone on your own,’ said Edgar.
‘I wasn’t sure that they were the right people,’ said Max. ‘In fact, I only had a vague memory of seeing the name.’ He smiled blandly at Edgar but could see that his friend wasn’t convinced.
‘Well, what did you make of them, these Angels?’
‘They seem legitimate enough, a husband and wife team. She’s English, he’s American. They didn’t seem sinister to me, for all that they take naked, or nearly naked, pictures of women. But there is a link with Ruby. They photographed her for a feature in Vogue. And they took pictures of Louise. They remembered her well.’
‘And Rhonda and Sara?’
‘They said they’d never heard the names. And they said they’d never tout for business in the street.’
‘You say the man is American?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Rhonda and Sara were both approached by a man with an American accent, saying that they should be models.’
‘Well, maybe you should talk to this Lou.’
‘I will,’ said Edgar. ‘If you haven’t put him on his guard.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Max. ‘It’s just that I’m so worried about Ruby.’
Edgar softened immediately. He put a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘We’ll find her,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ said Max. He looked at the clock over Edgar’s desk. Like everything else in the police station it looked like a prop from the Hammer House of Horror, a carved wooden thing with a sinister, ponderous tick.
‘I’d better go back,’ he said. ‘I’ve got my weekly telephone call with Lydia in an hour.’
‘Transatlantic?’ said Edgar.
‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘It’s early morning in Beverley Hills.’
The interview was even more of an ordeal than Emma had expected. The questions from Sam were all right. She had to ask the ones about ‘how do you support your husband?’ but at least she did them in a soppy voice accompanied by an eloquent eye-roll. It was the photographs that were excruciating. First Harry wanted her to pose on the sofa clutching a photograph of Edgar. ‘It’s as if he’s dead,’ said Emma. The only photograph she had of Edgar on his own was one that she’d been given by her mother-in-law, Rose. It showed Edgar in his brief student days, standing outside his Oxford college, stick thin and holding the handlebars of a bicycle. Then Harry wanted her with her children grouped around her. Marianne loved this, of course. She’d taken her hair out of its plaits and it stood out in a Pre-Raphaelite cloud. But Sophie was embarrassed and hid behind her mother. Johnny was teething, so alternately drooling or crying.
‘Perhaps it’s better on your own,’ said Harry. He was sweating profusely.
‘Harry seems very nervous,’ whispered Emma to Sam as she stopped in the hallway to apply more lipstick.
‘He’s just shy around you,’ said Sam. ‘You should see him letting his hair down in the pub, singing Frank Sinatra songs and chatting up the girls.’
Emma looked at herself in the mirror. The lipstick seemed too bright for her pale face. She didn’t think she’d ever looked less alluring. ‘I find that hard to believe,’ she said.
Sam laughed. ‘Come on, let’s get some more pictures taken.’
Harry wanted a photo in the kitchen, so Emma posed by the stove, pretending to stir something in a saucepan. ‘Our readers will love the domestic touch,’ said Sam. ‘Have you got an apron?’
‘No,’ said Emma. The only one she possessed had been a present from the girls. It had ‘World’s Best Mummy’ printed across the pockets.
‘This will have to do then,’ said Sam. ‘Smile!’
‘I am smiling.’
‘You look beautiful,’ said Harry.
At this, Marianne and Sophie laughed so much that they could hardly stand.
Twenty-Three
Max left the telephone room feeling thoughtful. The weekly call with Lydia had run along familiar lines. Lydia had said that she missed him and kissed his photograph every night. She said that the children and the dog missed him too. She asked about Golden Heart and said that she’d never been to England. Then she mentioned all the film offers that she’d received and hinted at the hordes of men who were besieging her in the absence of her husband. When Max refused to rise to this last she had grown tearful and accused him of having a mistress in England. When he said that he was distracted by worry over Ruby she said that Ruby was able to look after herself and had, clearly, ‘gone off with a beau’.
Max stopped in the lounge to light a cigarette. The silver case seemed to wink at him mockingly. For MM with love, LL. Standing by the house in Montpelier Crescent, he’d vowed to forget Florence and concentrate on his marriage to Lydia. Visiting Massingham Hall, he had even been able to imagine himself there with his wife and children. But, after a conversation like this, the crackling and delays only heightening the distance between them, he wondered whether he’d ever really loved Lydia. Had he just been dazzled by her beauty, as he had by Florence’s? How could he stay with someone who so clearly disliked his eldest daughter? But he had to stay with her, she was Rocco and Elena’s mother. He wasn’t going to be the one to break up his hard-won family.
Max put the cigarette case back in his pocket and his hand closed around the little blue cat that he’d taken from his father’s desk. A whimsical object for the prosaic Alastair to possess. It felt as though it should be a lucky charm. Max always liked to say that, unlike most pros, he had no pet superstitions. But he always walked in an anticlockwise circle before going on stage and had never knowingly said the word ‘Macbeth’ within a theatre. Now he turned the cat over in his hand. Find Ruby, he told it.
Could Lydia possibly be right? thought Max, leaving the lounge and heading towards the lobby. Could Ruby have run away with a lover? They were her shoes in the tunnel but, as every magician knows, the girl’s clothing does not equal the girl herself. He’d lost count of the times that he’d used that particular bit of misdirection; a robe that resembled the body that had once filled it, shoes sticking out from the end of the cabinet shortly to be sawn in two. It was possible, in theory, for someone to have stolen Ruby’s shoes, or even purchased an identical pair, and put them in the tunnel so that everyone would jump to the easiest, and also most shocking, conclusion. But why? So that the kidnapper would gain the news coverage that Joe, and Emma, thought he wanted?
On a table by the reception desk, the day’s papers were laid out. Ruby’s face stared up
at him from most of them: Ruby as a chorus girl in a skimpy Red Indian outfit, Ruby in her early TV days, all smiles and dimples, an older Ruby in evening dress holding an award. One picture on the front of the Daily Mirror jumped out at him: Max and Ruby in front of a playbill advertising Magician and Daughter, she radiant, he looking slightly bored. That was the Christmas season of 1953, the year that he’d met Florence. He remembered staggering through the act the night that she died, Ruby carrying him every step of the way. Ruby was a great magician. Could she possibly have masterminded this whole illusion?
‘Mr Mephisto!’ It was the receptionist, raising her voice as loudly as she dared.
‘Sorry. I was miles away.’ Max came over to the desk.
‘Telephone message for you.’
Max took the note which had the Grand’s logo on the top, golden crown against a sea-blue background. The writing was rounded and rather childish.
Mr Hambro called. Could you meet him at this address tonight at 7?
Dean Court Road, Rottingdean. Max looked at the words as a vague memory came back to him. Bobby sipping orange juice in the Garrick Club.
I know Rottingdean. I used to spend my holidays near there.
Dean Court Road was a street of handsome mock-Tudor houses that started by the village church and continued steeply upwards until it reached the Downs. At the bottom of the hill was a hotel called Dean Court Lodge, a strange collection of low-lying timbered buildings that seemed almost to be cut into the earth, reminding Max of Bag End in The Hobbit (a book he had read, under protest, to Rocco and Elena). He seemed to remember that the hotel had once been popular with ex-music-hall artistes. What a place to end your days.
The address given to him by Bobby was halfway up the hill, a solid-looking house with smooth lawns and a double garage. It looked like it belonged to a doctor or a dentist, possessor of a charming wife, two well-behaved children and a Labrador. It did not look like the hideout of a Hollywood star.
Now You See Them Page 17