by Tanith Lee
Stewart phoned his lover that night at eleven twenty-three.
“Yes?” she said breathlessly.
Stewart spoke crucially. “Your worries are over.” She said nothing, but he interrupted her silence: “You remember what’s next?”
“Yes. Thank…” she said, but he had cut her off completely before she could utter another word.
Stewart himself had received the affirming call only twelve minutes before. It had been even shorter, and rather more obscure, than his to his lover. “OK?” the caller had asked “Fine,” said Stewart, “yourself?” “Just fine,” the caller answered. That was it. It meant the prepaid job was successfully done. And Stewart had no reason to doubt or quibble. He, or rather those few he recommended, had all been served to perfection.
Laurence Adrian Lewis was dead. And if at that moment Stewart and Angela both thought Laurence would be found to have been the recipient of a random, probably junkie-based lethal mugging, something even more unpolice-worthy could only provide a cherry on the cake.
Angela had met Stewart about three months prior to the events of that Friday.
Their first rendezvous was in a rundown pub in Putney known, to its regulars, and the Shit-Hole.
Stewart could tell instantly Angela was uneasy, and she was besides far too overdressed. She wore a Maeve Astly sweater, mid-calf length velvet pencil skirt, high-heeled suede boots, and a Venetian cagoule. She had an attractive walk, however, and an excellent figure, which even the cagoule did not disguise, once she sloughed it. She was about forty-five, he thought, but then he himself was forty-eight. He liked her narrow, rather canine face, too, with its large hazel vulnerable eyes and generous mouth filled with white teeth. Her hair was fashionably short and streaked.
She drank gin and tonic, paying for it herself, of course. He stayed with his half of beer. He was driving, and always careful of the law.
Angela had found Stewart through the classifieds at the back of a sex magazine. Apparently Laurence liked to buy these sometimes, he never made a secret of it. Though why he needed them, she had told Stewart with a swift jettison of all secrecy, was beyond her. It seemed to her he went to bed with practically every women he had dealings with, even with her, (Angela) she added sourly, if nothing more tempting was on tap.
Stewart and she discussed how their relationship would go. Neither, at that juncture, anticipated it would last beyond a few weeks at most. Just enough time for her to get her own back on Laurence. And thereafter to reap the inevitable rewards.
But it did not turn out like that. Things changed.
Stewart was already (nominally) married. This prolonged hardship, and its prior living together, had dragged through almost twenty-eight years, and produced two children. One a male sponger, previously and again currently living on benefit, and ousted from the family home only by parental break-up; the other an hysterical female, who had finally gone to live in Birmingham with a petty crook called Sinbad. By the time of meeting Angela, Stewart had not seen either his wife or his children for over four years. He had had occasional women during the interval. Nothing permanent. Angela was different.
Not only was she, at least to Stewart, very attractive, but a cut above what he was used to - including his wife. Angela read books, too, as Stewart had and did, liked films (or movies as now one was obliged to call them) also as Stewart did. That she was knowledgeable in some areas where he was not did not bother Stewart. He liked to find out new things. It worked the other way also. For Stewart knew plenty Angela did not, and when he thought it sensible he let her in on it.
“You remind me, Stew, of Bogart,” she said to him one afternoon in late October. “Playing Marlowe,” she suggested.
“I was named after Stewart Granger,” Stewart said. He smiled.
“No, you’re much more like Bogart. Although actually better than Bogart, though I love him. After all you’re not on film. You’re real.”
“That makes you the real Bacall then,” he said.
Angela laughed. They had been sitting in the Lewis sitting room, a huge space with vanilla walls and amber furnishings. “I wish.”
Laurence was away for two weeks at the dig in the north - Coreley, the place was called. Here some farmer had unearthed part of a Roman villa. But, (as Angela had now found out) additionally Laurence was seeing a couple of girls there, one belonging to BBC personnel, the other to the archaeological group. He had spent a long weekend with one at her house in Manchester, and another weekend with one at a pub-hotel in the Dark Hills area. Angela had seen photos of both women, both were fairly judged young and pretty. But when Stewart and she discussed it, he told Angela, from the evidence, the archaeology type seemed to him too masculine, while the personnel girl had sounded slightly mentally deficient.
Angela-Bacall offered Stewart-Bogart another drink.
“I’d better not. The car.”
“Do you have to be somewhere?” she asked, leaning back and gazing at him. Her eyes looked nearly golden in the low slanting sunlight.
“Nowhere special.”
“Stay to dinner,” she said. “There’s lots to eat. I could do with the company. And we have six spare bedrooms,” she playfully added. “You wouldn’t have to sleep in the conservatory.”
It went without saying, long before dinner, he and she were in the seventh bedroom, which normally she shared with her unfaithful husband. It was a great success, this. And it was now much more than liking, sex, or regard. Tenderness seemed to have complicated the picture. Or augmented it.
In the morning they had begun to talk about other things, things that might happen once Laurence had been ditched and stripped of a suitable Angela-enhancing pay-off.
Stewart had never minded the idea she should be rich. He thought frankly she deserved it. On the other hand, now he too might fully profit by it, a sort of interested expectation started to manifest in him. They both knew, even with a private investigator recording all of Laurence’s adulteries, divorce might be a messy and humiliating procedure for her. And Laurence, she was sure, would try to fight her. She felt he approved, she told Stewart, of taking the licence to fuck whoever he desired, but keeping loyalty as his excuse - even loyalty to a frigid vindictive spouse - to prevent any liaison becoming permanent.
Of course, Angela was not frigid. Stewart by then knew that extremely thoroughly.
Vindictive though by then she probably was.
It was however Laurence’s last affair - the one with the girl Nick knew as Kit, or Kitty - that caused Angela’s full malice at last to bloom.
“But - for Christ’s sake, Stew - look at this photo - she’s exactly like his bloody mother. Claudia Martin - have you heard of her?”
“Yes, I have. I’ve seen her too, on screen.” Stewart’s parents had been great cinema addicts.
“Laurence hated Claudia. He loathed the woman. He was always complaining about her. He said she was the worst woman he ever knew and a wonder she hadn’t put him off all women for life - some fucking chance - but now he’s screwing her double?”
“Not quite her double, surely?”
“As near as. Come on. What do you think? Bloody, bloody hell!” Angela shouted. (Stewart was not thrown by her temper. He knew well enough how to handle volatility of all kinds.) “He is disgusting. I wish he was dead. I’d like to kill him. I’d pay to have him killed.”
Stewart had removed the photograph before Angela could deface it, then waited calmly. He brought her another drink, and held her when she started to cry.
In the end, he said comfortingly, “But you don’t mean that, do you, Angie? About killing him.”
She whispered, “I do mean it. The hell he’s put me through all the years we’ve been together. The misery. The filth. Oh God, Stew. I’d like to wipe him off the face of the planet. Oh, you hear these stories about hit men for hire - but it isn’t like, well, finding a private detective. Is it?”
“Not quite.”
“But if only - I would do anything.” Sh
e grew deadly quiet then. Her wolf’s eyes bored into his. “I’ve never known anyone like you before,” she said. “You don’t - do you know any way - I could find a contract killer?”
He took her hand and led her upstairs. When Laurence was not there, there were no other people in the house but her. No one came in to clean or cook or get in the way. He and she made love quite violently now, the door standing open. Outside the windows the birds tweeted - in tweeting’s original meaning - taking no notice of any human outcry.
Only after did Stewart tell her that yes, he did know someone who might know someone. If she had really meant it.
Softly Angela said to him, “If you like I’ll write it in my blood on the wall.”
For the first then, Stewart Pond became properly aware that Angela Lewis too was potentially rather mad, and might be dangerous. But he had gone too far. He had become human again, wanted something again. It was a new lease of life for him. They had also, of course, themselves committed adultery frequently, and though not careless, someone always seemed to find such things out. Which might well complicate the progress of any divorce proceedings.
That evening he only said, “Leave it with me.”
She did so.
For Pond it was quite simple. He had known The Man, (Pond only ever called him that now) since army days back in the late 1970’s. On some five previous occasions Pond had requested his service, for a recommended client.
The Man’s work was impeccable. As too on this job. Later Pond had not been sure how he had managed it, but subsequently assumed Laurence, already weakened by some physical flaw, had merely been frightened to death. A unique triumph, and supremely useful. Better than any fake mugging, definitely.
As for Angela’s initial actions, Pond and she had choreographed them. First her frantic calls to Nick, Laurence’s brother. (“He is such a wimp.” Angela’s character sketch. “Laurence says he’s probably a queer. Nicolas, it seems, can’t fuck a woman unless he does it for money. Or so Laurence says.” On Nick then Angela vented her ‘panic’ over Laurence’s ‘disappearance’. Post inquest, Angela threw out of the house the prying if stupid Serena, Laurence’s sister. (“I never could stand the little bitch. A couple of third rate parts in utter crud and she thinks she’s TV’s Angelina Jolie, if several years older.”)
Then though Angela seemed to get rather carried away. She barred Nick and Serena from the funeral, due to their unloving and corrupting influence on Laurence, who otherwise would have been a paragon of marital sublimity. In this, Angela had certainly gone a little too far. She had also strongly implied an incestuous love-hate bond between Laurence and his mother. No doubt fostered mostly by Claudia.
As for Pond’s involvement as a private investigator, who had revealed Laurence’s three latest affairs, that had been reserved as a safeguard. If needed, it could be used to implicate in some manner the third and final lover, Kitty. Hence the choice of Richmond Park, near enough to Kit’s sometime flat, as the place of execution: Driving home from the flat, Laurence must have stopped off - perhaps even to procure drugs - and so met his end.
Nick’s production of Kit’s note, however, provided another gambit. Death had not been triggered by fear, but by the wanton upset Kit, the Ball-Breaker, had caused. (For that reason Pond had pocketed her note.)
This piece of evidence was dependent, clearly, on Laurence’s also having spent (preferably) the weekend - at least some of Friday night - with Kit at the Wimbledon flat.
In fact that would not have been possible. Kit had already left the flat and gone off somewhere - something she was prone to, according to her Wimbledon neighbours. Pond, having gained entry to the block, (his friend the locksmith had provided Pond certain extra props) had had the odd chat with these neighbours, who did indeed think he visited someone in the top flat, a deaf, partially sighted recluse named Mr Purvis. Pond, who did not, and had no intention whatever of troubling Mr Purvis, learned various things about Kit in this way. As well as being often absent, it seemed to be a fact no one was entirely certain when she was there anyway. She was usually “So quiet”. The flats were well sound-proofed evidently. Nor did Kit seem to drive a car and park it, which would have marked her presence.
All this might prove very useful. It meant, if essential, Pond could claim he had seen Kit and Laurence in her flat, on the ‘fatal’ weekend. She in her bathrobe, he in just a towel, as Pond had relayed to Nick. (Laurence’s car, missing from the driveway - which might perhaps have been noted - could always have been parked, for at least some of the time, down the road. Pond had already counted quite a collection of vehicles filling the drive at weekends.)
In fact the towelling scene Pond witnessed had taken place some weeks earlier.
In light of this, Pond was aware the girl might produce an alibi for the time of Laurence’s death. But from what he had so far heard of her, he doubted it would be a reliable one. Her existence seemed skittish and a little off-colour. Not always lawful? He had over the years, Stewart Pond, acquired something of a nose for that sort of thing.
From what he had learned - by then, quite a lot - about Laurence’s routines, Pond had assumed he would, on that actual Friday night, go almost directly home to the Kensington house and Angela. Angela, obviously, had told Pond that Laurence had called her. He had to see Nick, he said. Laurence had not said he and Nick might ‘make a night of it’. But Laurence had said Nick might ‘delay him’, or traffic might. Nick, it seemed, had asked to see Laurence, but Angela did not credit that. Laurence and Nick had been enemies since adolescence. She suspected instead yet another woman. However, when Pond tailed Laurence from Euston Station and the intervening wine-bar, Nick’s flat was where he ended up.
Pond kept watch. When Laurence came out forty-eight minutes later, so far as Pond could see he set about driving in the right direction for South Ken. There was one other informative detail. Laurence had switched his watch to the one Angela had given him, the one he, she said, detested but wore to keep the peace. As if none of his other exploits could mar it. Angela had told Pond about the watch business. She said she had tried very hard to buy Laurence something he would like, idiotically still attempting to win his approval, and he had made it plain he was not impressed. Then made that worse by always wearing the watch - or dramatically forgetting to. It only amused her now, and sometimes when he ‘forgot’ really amused her. It was reasonable he might have forgotten that night, too, but he had not. The chunky Angela watch was on his wrist, entirely visible to Pond when Laurence pushed off his sleeve to look at it. From this last piece of info Pond felt safe to conclude Laurence meant to go straight home. So Pond called The Man.
The Man would be waiting for Laurence already, a few streets from the house. It was a spot selected from Laurence’s normal homeward route for maximum suitability, privacy.
Pond expected to hear nothing more until the confirming phone call, which would come when it came.
He was surprised therefore when his mobile sang out only an hour later. It seemed too quick. It was.
“Your friend hasn’t turned up,” said The Man.
Pond said levelly, “He should have. Traffic?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Stopped off then for another rest.” The Man would understand Pond meant another bevvy. He had explained Laurence was a heavy, indeed alcoholic drinker, with no respect for the anti-drink driving laws.
“OK,” said The Man.
“He’ll be along,” said Pond. Perturbed, he began to wonder if Laurence would. But The Man and Pond went back a long way. There was no suspicion either would muck the other about.
“OK,” said The Man again.
And it was left at that.
Pond’s relief had been enormous when he received the confirming call at eleven twenty-three that night. He did ponder, however, where Laurence might have gone in the interim. The Man had said nothing more about the delay. In the end the target had appeared and the work was carried out in full. And to The Man
maybe, in the end delays did not matter. The Man was or had been, a sort of machine. Time for him perhaps had no meaning, as life did not. Both were disposable.
After the weekend, and Monday, Pond called on Nicolas Lewis.
Pond tended to be thorough with all his commissions. He did not leave many stones unturned. To be taking a reading of Laurence’s (hated/hating) younger brother seemed both advisable and a needful part of the general act.
From Nick, Pond would, on his second visit, gain the bonus of Kit’s note. Though by then it was more a provision than an essential, as no police suspicion had ultimately surrounded Laurence’s ‘natural’ death.
But there were other gains. And one of these involved the probable explanation as to where Laurence had spent that extra time between leaving Nick and encountering The Man in Kensington.
Stewart Pond was struck by Nick’s appearance at once. Although Pond had eventually detected a sort of likeness to the actress Claudia Martin in Laurence’s woman, (whose real name, apparently, was Kitra Andrezou) Nick truly did look like Martin. Pond, having been given Angela’s vivacious assessment, had consequently made a point of watching one of Martin’s old films. He had enjoyed the film (Dizzy); he could recall seeing it too when younger. But personally he had thought any resemblance between Kitra and Martin negligible. Nick however, unlike Laurence, was obviously her son. He could additionally, if technically realigned by CGI with the young Claudia, have passed for her brother - even her male alter-ego.
Despite being charmed by this quite logical familial eccentricity, Pond stored it for future possible reference or use. As he did with most pertinent facts.
His manner meanwhile was the one he now and then presented to those he must, one way or another, interview. Even sometimes to clients. He had been taken for all sorts of official or unofficial policeman. (Only with the police themselves, plainclothes or otherwise, did Pond never attempt to project such an image.)
It made Nick a little uneasy, Pond saw, but that did not necessarily indicate much. Lots of innocent people became nervous around the police, or those adequately passing for them.