'You mean Beale Feirste Books?' I nodded lethargically. 'As it happens,' he continued, 'I know Daniel quite well. They do an admirable job, encouraging local talent.' The emphasis on the local was very deliberate. It was Brendan saying that he wasn't local. He was international. 'Terrible shame about Rosemary. Fine looking woman.'
'So what's the gossip about what happened?' I asked. 'Did he do her in with a shovel?'
He gave me a look heavy with disdain and pity, as if he expected nothing less from a man who specialised in what I specialise in. 'I should think not. They were deeply in love, you could tell that just by looking at them.'
'A crime of passion, perhaps.'
'Absolutely not. Not Daniel.'
'Everyone can be pushed to it. Perhaps she was having an affair with one of the poets at their little retreat; they're supposed to be a randy bunch, aren't they? And they've so much time on their hands. Poems, I mean, you can knock them out in an hour.'
Brendan shook his head. 'Poetry . . .' And then he thought better of it. He took another sip of his wine, savoured it – although given its origin, God knows what he was savouring – and seemed to get a faraway look in his eyes. 'You know,' he said after a minute of embarrassed silence, 'she wasn't like that at all. She was beautiful, friendly, even flirtatious. There was a spark about her. She was funny, and intelligent, and caring. Took a notion of her myself once. A lot of red wine involved, and I fooled myself into thinking she was interested, but she soon put me straight. I really was smitten. I even told Daniel how I felt. And he absolutely understood. He said, Brendan, don't you know, everyone loves Rosemary. She's just fantastic. He obviously had or has something very special with her, something where he doesn't have to be jealous, where he doesn't have to worry about her being tempted by any of their visiting artists, no matter how internationally renowned they may be.'
'Perhaps he has a tremendously large cock,' I said.
I actually shocked myself. Certainly Brendan looked stunned. On reflection, all I can say is that it may have been something of a defence mechanism. Here was a man I hardly knew talking about his personal relations and feelings, and I was mortified. I mean, I only asked if he thought Daniel had murdered his wife, I didn't need to know about his own pathetic attempts at seduction. There's a time and a place for such revelations. Like your death bed. Not in No Alibis on a Saturday morning with two genuine customers and a shoplifter listening in.
Still, I have to admit, it was serving to reignite my interest in the case. Daniel had been rather modest about describing the obvious attractions of his wife. She was clearly, as Jeff had indelicately put it, and as evidenced by her photograph, something of 'a ride', and according to what Brendan had now told me, she also had men falling left, right and centre for her. Two words immediately sprang to mind: femme fatale, and they immediately opened up an entire vista of possibilities. Despite both Brendan and Daniel's assertion that she was incorruptible, I naturally suspected otherwise. She had rejected Brendan because he was a dick, and was betraying Daniel because he was too naïve to believe that she would. That's how they operate. Femmes fatales find marriage to be confining, loveless and sexless, they use their cunning and sexuality to gain their independence. Flickering black-and-white images crowded through my mind. Phyllis Dietrichson like a caged animal in Double Indemnity, Rip Murdoch wishing aloud in Dead Reckoning that women could be reduced to pocket size, to be put away when not desired and returned to normal size when needed. I saw Rita Hayworth pouring it on in Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai; the cut of her clothes, her words, her actions, her ability to hold the camera; Velma's legs in Murder, My Sweet, Cora's in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Rosemary was erotic, she was alluring, she was trouble. She was bigger than Banbridge, bigger than Belfast, she did not do local, she was international. If it turned out that she was sharing a caravan in Bally castle with a drunken poet, my clinical depression would undoubtedly deepen.
By the time I shook myself back to the present, Brendan was helping himself to what remained of the bottle without so much as offering a share. Still, it was no bad thing – mixing alcohol with medication is not recommended and if not checked can lead to embarrassing situations.
I deal in consequences.
'So what do you think has happened?' I asked. 'She's run off with someone in Germany?'
He looked thoughtful for a moment, his body swaying ever so slightly. 'Mmmmm,' he said, 'Germany. Always puzzled me, that. You're aware of what they publish?' Only what Daniel had told me, but I nodded anyway. 'Beats me why they would need to go to Frankfurt. With my own books you can understand – I'm translated into thirty-two languages. But is there really much of a demand in Spain for a book about the geology of the Sperrin Mountains? Or in Brazil for a treatise on the Lambeg drum? I would expect that the market abroad for short fiction set in Newtownards is rather similar to the clamour there is here for sonnets composed by Peruvian shepherds. What exactly was she hoping to achieve out there?'
'Well, I got the impression it was something of a busman's holiday type thing. He said it was like seeing family.'
'Well, maybe there's your answer,' said Brendan, raising an eyebrow. 'All families squabble.'
12
Custom was slow even for a Saturday afternoon. If I'd closed up shop in order to drive down to speak to Daniel Trevor face to face, I'm not sure that more than half a dozen people would have noticed, and three of them only because they wanted to use the toilet. But driving was, of course, out of the question; I wasn't even sure if the dirt tracks that exist outside of Belfast would be wide enough to accommodate the No Alibis van. The alternative was to phone him for the information I was after – but he was the type to endlessly yitter around a point, and frankly I couldn't be bothered with that. So I e-mailed.
It was clearly important to Rosemary Trevor, an acknowledged (if only by me) femme fatale, that she still went to Frankfurt even though her husband wasn't going. But was it for business or pleasure? According to Daniel, she hadn't been socialising in Frankfurt at all, but taking early nights. Well, possibly. She might easily have made her reassuring calls home, and then immediately gone out partying. She might have had a string of lovers. I was quite sure there were several thousand men there who could easily have fallen for her. But giving her the benefit of the doubt, what about the books she was trying to sell? Brendan, being as self-centred as he was, couldn't imagine that a publisher from another country might be interested in anything produced in Northern Ireland, but that would surely depend very much on exactly what she had on offer. It could be a variation of the provincial journalist's eternal search for a local angle to an international story: an international angle to a local story. Perhaps she had something that originated here but also appealed to a global market. But even if she had, what bearing could it possibly have on her ultimate disappearance?
As I waited for a response to my enquiries, I armed myself with a Crunchie and my binoculars and settled down for a relaxing afternoon watching both the jewellery store and life in general out on Botanic Avenue. I had my notebook open beside me to jot down the licence plates of the cars parked immediately outside the shop, and for a hundred yards on either side. I have always done this. Not always, but since I was twelve and had measles and there were no books in the house because my father was a Free Presbyterian and objected to the rude words and verbs, and I had to find something to do with my time. I compiled many volumes full of car registrations, and spent hours looking for patterns in them. I still do it. I have not yet discovered any patterns, but I believe that my chances of ever finding them have been corrupted by personalised number plates, for which I have developed a pathological hatred. I routinely scratch the paintwork of cars that have personalised number plates using a nail I purchased specifically for this purpose. It is difficult to purchase just one nail, and the man in the hardware store took an age and a half to come up with a price for it; he kept trying to give me more nails for the same amount of money, but I wouldn't have them.
They're dangerous. If the police were to take possession of my car-scratching nail and analyse it they would find microscopic shavings of the paint of a thousand cars, and arrest me and put me in prison. This is one reason I don't like dealing with the police, in case they discover my nail. I keep it hidden in the fridge in the small kitchen at the back of the store. When I go out shopping I take the nail from the fridge in case I find any personalised number plates. I still routinely memorise ordinary number plates and then write them down when I get back to work. However, on this occasion, I rather hurried getting the numbers down, as I had spotted that Alison was just returning to work. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think that that is only true in certain cases. I would defy anyone to look at the photograph of Rosemary Trevor and say that she wasn't beautiful. But out of any dozen men surveyed, perhaps only two or three would say that Alison fell into the same category. That was good for me, because I don't do well in a competitive market. I cannot imagine anyone being my sun and stars, my earth and moon, if there's even a vague possibility that someone else is going to come along and steal her away. I thanked God that she had immediately seen through Brendan's floppy hair and surgically enhanced smile. I could only keep my fingers crossed that there was nobody else in her life. I fervently hoped that her domestic arrangements were as sad as my own, that she had only known disappointment and rejection in her relationships; that she had been through her period of only liking attractive men, that she had relaxed her standards sufficiently to consider borderline personality disorders and romantic attachments that were just a few degrees south of stalking.
I am quite self-aware.
There is no sugar on my almonds.
Alison did not once glance across the road towards me. I didn't consider that to be indicative of anything. Yes, she had stormed out of my store, but it had not been my fault. And comparing what I knew about her at the start of the day – little to nothing – with what I now knew, I could not help but consider my current position to be beyond my wildest possible dreams. I had admired her from afar for such a long time. (Well, not always afar, as on several occasions I had actually gotten quite close to her while I followed her shopping.) But now I not only knew her Christian name – Alison, meaning 'little Alice', with Alice meaning 'of a noble kin'; a princess, undoubtedly – but also that her first love wasn't the jewellery store. She was an artist who struggled with writing. I had grown up on comics, and although I didn't stock them in the store, I had maintained a passing interest, which I was now more than prepared to fan back into life if it meant us having something in common. I Googled Alison and comics in the hope that I might suddenly be inundated with thousands of leads to further information about her, but all I got in return was a moment of stark terror – the only working comic-book artist with that first name was a lesbian called Alison Bechdel who was famous (in certain circles) for a strip called 'Dykes to Watch Out For'. However, further investigation showed that she'd been drawing 'Dykes' since 1983, which surely ruled my Alison out on age grounds, and that she was in fact American. Of course it didn't mean that my Alison wasn't a lesbian. There was always that possibility. I had never seen a boyfriend hanging around the shop to meet her at lunchtime or after work, and when I'd sat behind her at the movies she had been by herself. (Hellboy – I should have picked up on the comics connection.) But I had seen no direct indication of Sapphic tendencies, and anyway, the whole phenomenon hadn't quite caught on in Belfast the way it had elsewhere. No, my Alison was an artist, but perhaps her comics hadn't yet been published, or she drew them purely for her own entertainment, or she worked under a pseudonym, or perhaps . . .
At that point my e-mail pinged and it was Daniel Trevor, and an attachment detailing Rosemary's appointments in Frankfurt, together with the titles and a brief description of the books she was selling there. Obviously I ignored this until after Alison left the jeweller's at five thirty. I took the precaution of lowering the binoculars as she bade farewell to her colleagues. I was not surprised when she failed to glance towards No Alibis. If she had, she would have found me studying the PC, not the slightest bit interested in her comings and goings, whereas in fact I had my webcam pointed across the road and was watching her every move on the screen before me.
After she had gone, and I had locked up the premises, I sat in the semi-darkness before my computer and finally opened Daniel's attachment. My field of expertise is books, not people – definitely not people – so the first list I studied was of the books and their brief synopses, to see if it would lead me anywhere. Everything I really needed to know was already in the titles. These were:
The Siege of Derry – by Dr David Wilson
It Was Fine When It Left Us: the Building of the Titanic – by Michael Mercer
I Came to Dance – the Autobiography of Anne Smith
Talks about Talks: the Northern Ireland Peace Process – by Andrew Capper
It was immediately clear to me that Brendan's declaration that there would be no interest abroad in local subjects was indeed blinkered. All four titles might have put me to sleep – but there could certainly be some foreign interest in them. The Titanic – went without saying. The siege – history and warfare, absolutely. A successful peace process, the envy of the world, a lesson in how to do it for other conflicts? Definitely. The only one I wasn't sure about was I Came to Dance – and that only because my knowledge of dance was so poor that I couldn't be sure that Northern Ireland had contributed anything at all to the bigger picture. But it might have.
I next turned to Rosemary's schedule, which was indeed packed. As I perused it, it quickly became clear that there was one publishing company, Bockenheimer, that had met with her every day. She had allowed exactly thirty minutes for each of her appointments, from 8.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. – except for the last two days, where it appeared that Bockenheimer had been levered in between other meetings at quite a late stage.
I glanced at my watch. It now being 7.30 p.m., and having not so much a window as an entire glasshouse in my social diary, I decided that there was nothing else for it but to phone Daniel Trevor. A gruff, somewhat slurred voice answered and promised to get him. I hung up after five minutes and rang back and this time Daniel himself answered. 'Saturday nights,' he wearily confessed, 'and the poets are on the loose.' He excused himself for a moment as he relocated to a quieter part of the house, then picked up the receiver again. 'It's a madhouse,' he said. 'Now what can I do for you?'
I plunged straight in without any niceties. Don't believe in them. 'Bockenheimer . . . four meetings in four days seems a bit excessive.'
'Manfredd!' Daniel laughed. 'Yes of course, dear Manfredd. Manfredd Freetz. He's an old friend, and one of our regular partners, we've done quite a few books with him over the years. Usually we conduct our meetings with him over a very liquid lunch, sometimes we can barely remember what we've agreed with him. Lovely man. Enjoys his beer.'
'Does four meetings not still seem a lot?'
'Oh, I don't know. She did say something about him. I think he was undecided about one of the titles – that can happen if it isn't written yet.'
'How do you mean, isn't written?'
'Well, we might be selling an outline, perhaps a couple of sample chapters – we're really selling the idea. Perhaps it will be an expensive book to print so we have to recruit some foreign publishers to help cover the costs. A co-production.'
'Which title was it?'
'Ahm – well, actually Rosemary had high hopes of selling him the Titanic book, and in fact he did take that, quite a healthy price too, but then he came back and expressed an interest in the dance book as well. Anne Smith's memoir. Yes, I remember now because we joked about it. Rosemary was deliberately quite vague with him about it. She gave him the outline and one of the chapters – about the later years of her career in Belfast – but she really couldn't give him anything else because the truth is the author has been quite seriously ill and hasn't been able to deliver. I think Manfredd believ
ed Rosemary was being coy to try and ratchet up the price.'
'But coy about what? Is anyone that interested in Northern Irish dance? Even in Northern Ireland?'
'Ah – right. I see where you're at. I may have misled you a little myself by calling it "the dance book". That's what we contracted for originally. Anne Smith is the doyenne of dance in Northern Ireland, the founder of our largest – and to tell you the truth, our only – school of modern dance. For thirty years she was our principal choreographer, she produced shows, she nurtured talent, she promoted her charges to companies all over the world. Really, I can't emphasise how important she has been to dance in Northern Ireland.'
He hesitated then.
'And . . . ?'
'Well, it seems that in her youth she was also principal dancer at the Birkenau labour camp. That's Auschwitz.'
'Fuck off,' I responded.
Mystery Man Page 6