by Jo Bannister
‘I will,’ promised Shapiro. ‘I’ll be sure to mention what an asset you are to them, too.’
They don’t have irony where Bibby came from. For the first time his eyes warmed. ‘Thanks, squire. ’Preciate it.’
Liz agreed with Amanda Urquhart an explanation of why the police
needed access to the firm’s correspondence files. They would say she’d received a threatening letter from someone who may have been a client at some time. But when she went to the office Mrs Urquhart said quietly, ‘Never mind the cover story. I’ve told them.’
Liz tried not to let her eyes widen too noticeably. ‘Everything?’
The other woman shrugged, only a little edgily. ‘Yes. I’m damned if I’ll let him make me a liar as well.’
‘How were they – your colleagues?’
‘Shocked. And angry, and kind. Like friends. I don’t know what else I expected.’
‘A bit of advice,’ said Liz. ‘Stock up on vases.’
They went through the correspondence disks on the firm’s computer, working back from the date of the attack. Then they hunted through the filing-cabinet for anything relevant. They weren’t sure what they were looking for. Ideally, a letter of complaint containing a veiled threat and the word Deconstruction. In reality, any communication from a man short of his dotage indicating real and sustained dissatisfaction. It was the nature of the business that there were more than a few of them.
There were several threats of legal action, a few of them aggressive on a personal level. But they all read as if they’d been written in anger and shouldn’t be taken at face value. People who threaten to go to law rarely turn to violence as an alternative. And in all the letters they read, the only reference to Deconstruction was by a man who thought it was the same as demolition and was worried about an extension he’d built without planning permission.
There was one more possibility. Liz went through the more-than-slightly-dissatisfied list again, looking for a name she recognized. There were a few – as Shapiro had said, there were bound to be. None of them, so far as she could remember, were rather small men of about her own age with whom she’d crossed swords.
After two hours she sat back on her heels – running out of desk space they’d moved on to the carpet – and scowled. ‘Damn. I thought we’d find something.’
Mrs Urquhart was frowning too. She looked as if she was trying to remember something. ‘The man who thought Deconstruction was something you did with a bulldozer.’
Liz glanced around the confetti of papers. ‘We didn’t keep him. If you remember, you sorted him out and he was eternally grateful.’
‘Yes,’ said the architect pensively. ‘But somebody else did that once – made that mistake, thought he was being clever by using technical jargon. Whoever was it? And why, and where?’
Mrs Urquhart’s secretary was on the computer. ‘The court case. That business of the swimming-pool roof that fell in. They tried to claim it was faulty design but it turned out the contractor had been using substandard materials.’
The architect’s face cleared. ‘That’s what it was. About three, four years ago. We actually had to go to court over it. We won, but it was nasty enough for a while. I’d never been in court before.’
‘Who brought the action?’
The secretary was busy with her disks again. ‘Jason Fielder, 212 Cambridge Road.’
Mrs Urquhart nodded slowly, remembering. ‘Yes. That was a very angry man – with every reason, if the roof had come down an hour earlier it would have killed his son.’
Liz felt the hairs standing up on her neck, like a terrier swelling at the sight of a rabbit. She didn’t recognize the name but that might not mean they’d never met. ‘What sort of a man is he – what does he do?’
‘Something in the motor trade. He owns that big garage on the ring road.’
‘A business which attracts its fair share of cowboys,’ Liz observed pensively. ‘What does he look like? How old is he?’
Mrs Urquhart shook her head decisively. ‘He can’t be our man. Yes, he’s about the right age and build, and yes, he’d some reason to be bitter. But Inspector, it can’t be him!’
‘Why not?’
The architect didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Look, I know I didn’t give you much of a description. His face was covered, his hands were covered, I only saw his eyes and I was stunned. I imagine it was the same with you?’
‘So?’
‘In spite of that,’ said Amanda Urquhart, ‘one of us would have noticed if he’d been black.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Four years on, Jason Fielder was still angry enough for his voice to quake when he described what happened. ‘An hour earlier my son was in the pool. That Sunday all three of us spent half the morning in it. I could have lost my whole family, Inspector Graham – you wonder I wanted someone to pay for that?’
As Amanda Urquhart had said, he was not a big man. But what he lacked in stature he made up in sheer dynamism. He was never still: pacing the room he took Liz to, fiddling with the ornaments on the mantelpiece, opening and shutting the bureau. Liz thought at first that he was nervous, that she was finally on the right trail, that somehow she and the others had failed to notice that the man who attacked them was black.
But watching him prowl she realized he wasn’t nervous at all: he just wasn’t used to being awake and doing nothing. It was easy to see how a man with that sort of compulsive, unquenchable energy could come from a back-to-back in The Jubilee, skip school to work in a car-breaker’s from the age of fifteen, and end up with a valuable business and a house in the best part of Cambridge Road.
‘The court said you were blaming the wrong people,’ Liz reminded him. ‘That the contractor cut corners, and Mrs Urquhart didn’t know and wasn’t in a position to know.’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Fielder savagely. ‘Only the contractor had moved on without leaving a forwarding address by the time the pool roof damn near fell on my boy’s head! All I know, Inspector, is that I paid a reputable firm for a swimming-pool extension and the first winter it fell down. If clever Mrs Urquhart didn’t know what the contractor was doing she damn well should have done.’
‘You’re still angry with her.’
‘Damn sure I’m angry! Wouldn’t you be?’
‘Probably,’ admitted Liz. ‘But I think I’d let it drop after a court told me I was being unreasonable.’
Fielder frowned, brows gathered over the fierce eyes. ‘So did I. Is somebody saying different? The Urquhart woman – what’s she saying about me?’
‘Nothing,’ Liz said honestly. ‘She’s – had a bit of trouble, but she isn’t accusing you. Only something was said that reminded her of the court case. Does the word Deconstruction mean anything to you?’
He laughed aloud, a deep and still bitter laugh. ‘What it doesn’t mean,’ he said, heavily ironic, ‘is the roof falling into your swimming-pool. That was made quite clear to me.’
Liz allowed herself a wry smile. ‘Extracting the Michael, was she?’
‘That the same as taking the piss? Yeah, she did that all right. Left me feeling about so high.’ The blunt fingers weren’t even at full stretch. ‘That was cheap. I wasn’t trying to make a fool of her, only to make her take responsibility for her mistake – whether that was the design or the people she gave the contract to.’
‘Have you seen her since?’
Fielder nodded. ‘It’s a small town, sooner or later you meet everyone.’
‘What did you say to her?’
‘Nothing. I crossed the street.’
There was nothing else to ask. Amanda Urquhart hadn’t believed Jason Fielder raped her; Liz didn’t believe it either. Using his hard-earned wealth to bring a legal action, that was his way. In certain circumstances she could imagine him shouting, waving his arms about, even slapping the woman he blamed for the near-tragedy. But stalking her, lying in wait and raping her to vent his fury? He’d have considered it beneath his di
gnity. It took him twenty years to make himself a man to be reckoned with. Liz couldn’t see him resorting to a form of revenge that had been available to him when he was poor.
As he walked Liz to her car Jason Fielder gave a sudden deep chuckle. ‘She didn’t have it all her own way, though. The clever Mrs Urquhart. She might have made me feel like something she’d found in a bad bit of wood but my brief gave as good as he got. She didn’t get any of those long words past him! Born with a silver dictionary in his mouth, that one.’
Liz smiled. ‘Let me guess. Dan Fenton?’
Untroubled by false modesty, Fielder beamed. ‘If you can afford the best, why settle for less?’ Then he shook his head regretfully. ‘We should have won. The work he put into it, we deserved to win. He said afterwards we would have done if it had been her partner’s project. No offence, Inspector Graham, but he reckoned the jury would have expected a man to know whether or not the contractor was skimping on the materials. He reckoned they accepted a lower standard of competence because she was a woman.’
When Shapiro went to the building society which acted as agents for The Barbican he was astonished to find Helen Andrews behind the manager’s desk.
A cocktail of hope and dread quickened her voice as she recognized him in return. ‘Mr Shapiro! Is there some news?’ She meant, had he found the man who raped her.
Recovering his composure he intoned reassuringly, ‘We’re making progress. Forgive me, I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I came to ask about a vacant office at the Basin. You told me where you worked but I’d forgotten.’
She ushered him in, left word at the front desk that they shouldn’t be disturbed. She wielded her seniority with grace: she knew she’d earned it and so did everyone round her. Like Liz Graham; like Amanda Urquhart. ‘Then how can I help you?’
Shapiro had intended to fib, as Liz had to Jason Fielder, about the reason for his questions. Now there was no need. ‘The man who attacked you also attacked a woman working late in The Barbican. She was his first victim, so far as we know, and he seems to have come out of an empty office that you have keys for. I need to know who has access to those keys.’
Mrs Andrews called up the information on her screen. ‘That’s the office on the first floor, opposite the architects.’ A tremor shook her and she stared at him wide-eyed. ‘It was Amanda Urquhart? Oh no. I know her, we were at school together. We were always called The Book-ends – we’re the same age, height, build, colouring.’ She blanched. ‘Dear God, did he make a mistake? Was he looking for me that time, too?’
‘No,’ said Shapiro quickly, ‘we’ve no reason to think that. My inspector fits the same description and he knew exactly who she was – he went to her home to rape her.’
‘I heard what she did,’ said Mrs Andrews softly. ‘That took courage.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Shapiro. ‘We’re very proud of her.’
The woman gave a slow smile. ‘Today’s my first day back at work. I kept putting it off till I heard that thing on the radio. Then I thought, why am I hiding? I’ve done nothing wrong! I thought, as long as the victims hide their faces the perpetrators don’t have to. So here I am.’
He wanted to say something encouraging, was afraid of offending her. Because he was a man and the victims were women the opportunities were legion, or felt to be if they were not. He settled for returning her smile. ‘Good. So, the keys. They’re kept here, are they?’
‘In the safe. They’re signed out if someone wants to view and in again afterwards. According to this’ – she tapped the screen – ‘they’re there now, but I’ll check.’ She did, and they were.
‘Who’s had them out in the last six weeks?’
That information was there too. ‘I have, four times. No one else.’
‘To show people round? Who?’
‘Different people. One was an accountant, one a barrister. Neither was interested after they’d seen the place: they liked the situation but both needed more room. Then there was a financial adviser – not a very good one, I don’t think, he liked it but couldn’t afford the rent – and a woman who runs a domestic service agency. She was the most recent, she’s still thinking about it.’
‘Apart from that your keys would have been here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could members of your staff take them out without it appearing on the record?’
Mrs Andrews was taken aback but took time to consider it. ‘I suppose so, but I can’t imagine why they would. There’s no one here I don’t have total confidence in. Dealing with other people’s properties you have to be sure of your staff.’
‘Fair enough.’ Shapiro was disappointed but not surprised. It would have been nice to get a positive response, something like: ‘We’ve always wondered about Mr Wiggins, something about the way he dribbles around the female clients,’ but that wasn’t usually how it happened. Sometimes, if you were lucky, you got a snippet of information that looked like nothing until you put it together with snippets of information obtained elsewhere. Dutifully he jotted down the names and addresses of the people who’d viewed the office.
He arrived back at Queen’s Street as Liz was parking her car; she waited and they went up together.
‘Any luck?’
‘Not that you’d notice. You?’
‘A curiosity, but I don’t think I’ll call a Press conference yet.’
They went to Shapiro’s office and he made some coffee. Living alone made him handy like that. This was the first posting Liz had had where it wasn’t automatically assumed – until she put the record straight – that she’d do the catering for any group of officers which didn’t include a WPC.
‘The curiosity,’ said Shapiro, hanging up his coat, ‘is that the keys for the empty office are held by Helen Andrews.’
Liz stared at him. ‘That has to mean something. So he could have met both of them there – Mrs Andrews was showing him round as Mrs Urquhart came out of her office.’
‘I got the names of the people Mrs Andrews has taken there in the last six weeks. One’s a woman, we can rule her out. The others are professional men, two financial wizards and a lawyer.’
‘A lawyer.’
Shapiro thought she hadn’t heard clearly so repeated it. ‘Yes, a lawyer. A barrister.’
For several seconds, which is a long time for a pregnant silence, Liz said nothing. Her eyes were narrowed, calculating, and when she spoke again her tone carried an edge. ‘We’re looking for an educated man trained to use his voice, yes? That’s a pretty good description of a barrister. Half his job is addressing large gatherings. And I know a lot of lawyers, so one viewing an office in The Barbican could easily have met all three of us. Who was it, Frank? Not Beanpole Barraclough, I hope, or Tabby Taylor?’
‘No, it was Fairly Ordinary Fenton,’ said Shapiro; and wondered why to all intents and purposes the world stopped turning. It was a modest enough joke by any standard. Usually he found he had to draw attention to his jokes; he couldn’t remember the last time one had stopped a conversation dead. ‘Liz, what is it?’
Her heart was thumping and she was fighting to keep her respiration under control. If he’d hit her with a wet sock wrapped round a gold brick she couldn’t have looked more dumbfounded. ‘Frank—’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to say it.’
‘Say it anyway.’
She took a deep breath. ‘About three years ago Dan Fenton and Amanda Urquhart crossed swords in court over the use of the word Deconstruction.’
Over the coffee they took a sober look at what they had. A man of the age and build described by the victims. A man who would own a silk evening scarf and soft leather gloves. A man for whom an unusual technical term had a peculiar significance. A man all three women had had dealings with.
‘But – this is an important man we’re talking about!’ Liz said, doubt already creeping in. ‘A respectable man. Would he really risk everything for the sake of a quick thrill in the hayshed?’
; Shapiro shrugged ponderously. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t see it as a risk. It’s the nature of his job to have more than a lay knowledge of rape: perhaps he thinks he can fox us. Perhaps that’s what he’s really after: not sex, he wasn’t long enough to enjoy it, but the pleasure of seeing us every day and knowing we’d give our eye-teeth to collar him if we could only work it out.’ His jaw tightened. ‘That performance in court. That wasn’t a wretched coincidence. You were in his way, he wanted to shut you up and he thought that would do it.’
‘Amanda Urquhart got in his way when she got the judgement against his client,’ Liz proposed slowly. ‘Frank, is that who he targets – women who stand up to him, who cut him down to size? Call Helen Andrews, ask if she ever got the better of him.’
Mrs Andrews had no trouble remembering the man she showed round the office a fortnight before – just two days before the attack in the corridor. ‘We’d met before. I was at another branch a couple of years ago and there was a misunderstanding. I showed someone a house, and while they were thinking about it I showed it to the Fentons. He made an offer, but the first couple came back and bettered it. I asked Mr Fenton if he wanted to reconsider. He obviously thought I was inventing the other buyer because he said that was his final offer and if it wasn’t accepted promptly he’d withdraw it. So the sale went ahead.
‘When he realized he’d lost it he got very shirty, threatened me with all sorts of legal action, but I’d done nothing improper and we both knew it. I stood my ground and there was nothing he could do. I was surprised when he phoned about the office in The Barbican, but not as surprised as him when I arrived to open up. We weren’t five minutes before he said he wasn’t interested. I don’t know why he thought he might be – it’s a fraction the size of the place they have now.’
‘He never intended renting it,’ Shapiro told Liz grimly. ‘All he wanted was to get inside, so he could lay an ambush for Amanda Urquhart. She was top of his list: he’d watched her, he knew she worked late, he knew if he waited in the empty office two or three nights running she’d be alone when the rest of the floor was empty. He needed access to the office to fix the door so he could get back whenever he needed.’