by Andy Maslen
Now the judge did smile. But it was a grim, humourless expression, in which his canine teeth seemed to do most of the work.
“You have a great deal of confidence, Detective Inspector, to invade my place of work. You’d better have an extremely good reason.”
“I think I do, Sir Leonard.”
“Well then, you’d better take a seat and ask your questions. Do I need a lawyer? This place is crawling with them.”
She shook her head. “Just routine enquiries, Sir Leonard, as I said on the phone. No need for a lawyer. You’re not under caution. I’m not even going to take notes.”
He smiled again. His eyes stayed clear and did not crinkle at the corners. Only his mouth moved, extending a fraction.
“Just helping the police with their enquiries,” he purred.
“Exactly. Did you have a chance to ask your PA – Shirley, was it? – about your movements on the date I gave you?”
“Indeed I did.” He moved to one side the paper he had been reading and withdrew a sheet of crisp, white, A4 printer paper from a folder. From her vantage point, Stella could see a single line of type. It looked like Times Roman. He took a pair of half-moon spectacles from the top pocket of his jacket and slid them onto his nose, peering down at the paper. “It says here I was having dinner. At my club.”
“Which club would that be Sir Leonard?” Jesus, if I have to say Sir Leonard one more time, I swear I’ll start tugging my forelock. Must remember not to curtsey on the way out.
“Black’s. Ironically.”
“Did you dine alone? Apart from the other members, I mean? Would there be someone who can corroborate your story?”
He looked up, staring at Stella over the lenses of his reading glasses, which made her feel as though she had been summoned to see a particularly fierce headmaster.
“Corroborate my story? My, my, Detective Inspector, are you sure I’m simply helping you with your enquiries?”
“I just have to follow routine, Sir Leonard. As I think you probably know. With your legal training.”
“Just so. Well, for your routine, I was with someone. Someone you may have heard of. Detective Chief Superintendent Adam Collier. He’s at Paddington Green. To which station did you say you were attached?”
He was watching her the way a lion watches an antelope as it stalks closer. Eyes zeroed in on her, muscles tensed. Ready to pounce.
“I didn’t. But it’s West End Central.”
“Hmm. Well, I’m sure you can find a way to contact Adam. He’ll corroborate my story for you. Now, if there’s nothing else, I am trying a case, had you not determined that for yourself.”
She stood. “No. There’s nothing else. And thank you, Sir Leonard. You really have been most helpful.” She turned to leave. Then stopped. Turned back as he was lowering his eyes to his paperwork again. “May I take that?”
“Take what?”
“That sheet of paper. With the details of the dinner on it?”
He sighed. “If you must, yes, take it. Then please leave.”
Stella stepped out of the shower. It was half past five. Plenty of time for a girl to get to ready for a date with a professional footballer. Oh, fuck, Stel! What the hell have we got ourselves into? There’ll be press there, everything. Doesn’t matter. He’s a suspect. She dried herself, scrubbing at her hair and pulling it through the bunched-up towel. Now: undies, then dress, then hair and makeup.
She owned precisely one cocktail dress. She took it off its silk-covered, padded hanger and laid it on the bed. It was almost black, but actually a deep, dark, green, like a mallard’s neck. Richard used to call it her “Emily dress” after they saw an actress of the same name wearing one just like it to some awards event or other. It had been wheeled out for official dinners, hen nights and the very occasional legal party Richard had taken her to. She picked it up and held the stiff bodice up to her face.
Then she jerked it away again, tears pricking her eyes. It smelled of him. His aftershave. She remembered. They’d danced the last dance together at a ball organised by a barrister friend of his. What was her name? Caroline something? It was in aid of a children’s charity her chambers sponsored. Stella had taken the piss out of him because he’d unaccountably drenched himself in the stuff. “Richard fancies Caroline, Richard fancies Caroline!” she’d chanted in the taxi, much to her husband’s embarrassment and the driver’s amusement. “Going to make a real impression on your ladylove tonight, aren’t you? She’ll swoon in your arms. Mind you, it’ll probably be asphyxiation.”
Shaking her head to rid herself of the memory, she selected her best underwear: matching black lace bra and knickers. Sheer black tights, too. Not stockings. Richard had loved them, used to plead with her to wear them. And she’d always given him the same answer. “You first!” She turned to the mirror to give herself an honest appraisal. Still a little on the skinny side, Stel, but at least Bob and Charlie have come back. She gave her boobs an experimental squeeze. Yes, enough cleavage to keep Mister Riordan interested.
With the dress safely wriggled up over her hips, she reached round to do the zip up. She managed all the way to the beginning of her shoulder blades before realising it had always been Richard’s job to tug it home over the last four or five inches.
“Really?” she said, her voice loud in the empty bedroom. “I’ve got a loaded, untraceable, police-issue Glock in a shoe-box, but I can’t get my bloody dress zipped?”
She sat on the bed. Come on, Stel, it’s just another challenge. Think. She nodded, once, stood, and reversed the zip till she could step out of the dress. She hurried out of the bedroom for the stairs, almost skidding on the top step, unaccustomed to the slithery nylon of the tights. It took her five minutes of searching cupboards and the drawer of random odds and sods in the kitchen before she found what she was looking for: a ball of butcher’s string. Thin, smooth, white and strong. She cut off a few feet. Upstairs, she looped it through the tab of the zip and then, as she pulled the dress up over her hips – still a bit bony, Stel – flipped the loose ends over her left shoulder. She wound them round her right fist, took up the slack, extended her arm towards the ceiling, and felt the two sides of the dress close around her. “Ta dah!” she whispered. “Now who’s the practical one, darling?”
Hair and makeup in Stella’s new world meant little more than a ponytail and a dab of moisturiser. She felt something more was needed for a black-tie charity ball at the Café Royal. It was odd, primping and preening for a man she might have to torture and kill, but then the world was a funny place. She did her hair in a tight plait at the nape of her neck, then pinned it up in a makeshift bun.
As she applied blusher, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick, she watched herself in the mirror. The woman staring out at her – pouting, pressing her frosted pink lips together, opening her smudgy, smoky eyes wide – seemed to move of her own volition. Stella began to feel she was merely a spectator. As if the woman she was watching were the real human being getting ready to go out and Stella were merely a reflection. She suddenly felt cold, empty. The butterflies that had been swarming beneath the tight satin of her dress quietened, then disappeared altogether. The traffic noise from the road outside her open window faded. Her breath came in shallow gasps, then it, too, stopped. The face of the woman in the mirror smiled at her. Then it, she – other-Stella – spoke.
“If it’s him, Stella, what are we going to do? I mean, we can’t just abduct him from the hotel. There’ll be about a million paparazzi outside.”
Stella answered, mechanically. Fascinated by the other woman’s poise.
“A back entrance? Through the kitchens?”
“Don’t be stupid! Barney Riordan's a footballer. An athlete. He’s twice your size. Come on, think.”
“I’ll say I feel sick. Ask him to take me home. He hasn’t got a girlfriend, he told me. He’ll come.”
“Better. And you’ll do it? If it’s him.”
A nod.
The woman smil
ed. Then she blew a kiss.
26
Charity
Stella jumped, startled by the doorbell. She misted her wrists and cleavage with perfume. She pushed her feet home into the high-heeled black suede shoes she’d bought to go with the dress and tottered downstairs to the front door, holding onto the bannister for dear life.
“Coming!” she yelled, then grabbed a small, black, sequinned clutch bag she’d pre-filled with credit card, tissues, emergency lippy, little helper, perfume, and door keys, and pulled the door open. Her bag promptly burst open, spilling its contents onto the floor.
“Fuck!” she said. Then, “Shit! Sorry. I mean, you look nice.”
Barney Riordan stood on the threshold, his smile deciding whether it should stay in place or leave by a back door.
“Thanks,” he said, grinning, “I think. Let me help you with your stuff.”
He bent and handed a few things to Stella. She grabbed for the little helper before he could touch it.
Riordan had dark-brown eyes, blond hair cut short and brushed into a parting with some kind of gel, and a good smile. He’d gone for a kind of nineteen-forties look, like a hero in a film about wartime pilots. He was about five-eleven with wide shoulders and a flat stomach. Good posture, but then, you’d expect that from a professional athlete.
The dinner suit was clearly bespoke. Nothing fancy. No upturned lapels or contrasting buttons. But it fitted perfectly. His wide shoulders filled the midnight-blue, shawl-collared jacket, but didn’t strain it like a bouncer’s cheap monkey suit. He’d set it off with a crisp white shirt with a pleated front and black studs instead of buttons. The bowtie looked hand-tied. As he leaned forward to kiss her chastely on both cheeks, it caught the light from the lamp above his head and flashed indigo.
“You look nice too. Lovely,” he said.
Outside, double-parked in the narrow street with its engine idling, was a deep, dark-purple saloon, its paintwork shimmering in the evening sunlight.
“Is that your Bentley?” Stella asked. “Of course it is! Duh!”
Riordan smiled. “Flying Spur. Not too flash, is it?”
She shrugged. “My usual ride’s only got two wheels.” She gestured at the black Triumph. “Anything with four is flash.”
She sauntered around the car as if to admire it, and glanced down at the registration plate.
R104DAN
She experienced a sudden jolt of fear, then anger. What if this is the car? The car that killed Richard? The car that killed him? The churning in her stomach intensified. What if it was the car that killed Lola? That burnt her to death, strapped into her little car seat?
Her hand shook as she fastened the seat belt. The muffled click did nothing to reassure her as to her safety. If it turned out to be Riordan, she’d handcuff him to the steering wheel and sit a jerry can of petrol on his lap, then–
“Next stop, the Café Royal,” Riordan said, breaking Stella’s fantasy into little charred pieces.
He was a careful driver. As they motored silently south along Hampstead Road towards the Euston Road, Stella leant back in the seat, more of an armchair, really, and tried to relax. The interior of the car smelled of leather and Riordan’s aftershave, a light, spicy fragrance that made her smile despite herself.
As they approached the huge east-west artery they needed to cross before heading into the centre of London, a small, grey car lurched out of a side street in front of them, just yards away.
Stella screamed.
Her hands flew out to clutch the dashboard.
Riordan swore and jammed on the brakes.
The little car weaved across the road in front of them and executed another signalless turn across the oncoming traffic. The driver appeared to be an elderly man, judging from the tweed cap, though it was impossible to be sure as the top of his head was barely level with the steering wheel.
The Bentley stopped, apparently without effort, though both Riordan and his trembling passenger were thrown forward hard enough for their seat belts to engage. Some sort of clever electronics must have been involved, because Stella felt herself pulled gently, but firmly, back into the embrace of her seat, rather than left to bounce around like a rag doll.
Riordan turned to Stella, once his own seat belt had released him.
“Are you all right? Sorry about that. Silly old sod could have killed us both.”
Stella shook her head. “Fine. I’m fine. Let’s just go, please.”
Leaving the keys to the Bentley with a valet presumably employed especially for the occasion, Riordan escorted Stella across the pavement and towards the entrance of the Café Royal. A length of very new-looking red carpet had been laid from the kerb to the revolving doors, and someone had even strung twisted red-velvet ropes from brass poles along each edge. Thirty or forty people were clustered against the ropes, phones held aloft, some on selfie sticks, their owners facing away from the carpet the better to capture themselves in the same image as one of their idols. A group of paparazzi had bagged most of the front row and were firing their expensive-looking cameras every time a car arrived at the kerb to disgorge its occupants. Two dinner-suited security guys flanked the door, their eyes flicking left and right, mouths set in a professionally grim line. And there, front and centre to the left of the door, was Daisy.
“Barney, before we go in, can you do me a massive favour?” Stella asked.
“Sure, what do you want me to do?”
“See that girl there with the big round glasses, the pretty one with the fringe? Can you go and say hi? She was supposed to come with me today to interview you at your ground.”
God love him, he was a generous soul, as well as a modest one. He smiled and ambled over towards Daisy, who looked as if she might faint before he reached her. Stella looked on, dazzled by the flashes from the cameras and bemused that anyone should want to photograph her in the first place. Barney was speaking to Daisy. Then he leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks before returning to Stella’s side and escorting her inside.
“Thank you,” she said over her shoulder, as she timed her entry into the revolving door.
The hem of her dress caught in the door, almost causing a ‘wardrobe malfunction’, as the paparazzi would no doubt call it, but Riordan shot a hand out and grabbed the edge to stop it turning before the final few degrees of rotation stripped the dress from her back.
Inside the foyer, bunches of sky-blue-and-white balloons bobbed at the ends of seven-foot silver ribbons tied to chunks of silver-grey granite on the floor. Knots of guests stood between two huge marble fireplaces, above each of which stood five huge glass vases filled with flowers that looked as though they had been picked in some exotic jungle earlier that day. The tall, lemon-yellow spires of tiny branching flowers glowed in the soft light emanating from hundreds of sky-blue or white candles.
A slim, beautiful waitress – deep brown skin, almond-shaped eyes and about nine feet tall, Stella judged – weaved through the thronging worthies and approached them. She carried a tray of champagne flutes.
“A drink, sir? Madam?” she asked in a south London accent that belied her supermodel looks.
“Have you got any sparkling water, please?” Riordan and Stella asked in unison.
The waitress nodded and smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
“I thought you footballers were all about the champagne and the high life,” Stella said, taking a moment to reassess Riordan.
He smiled. “Some of us are. I don’t drink.”
“No?”
“No.” Another smile.
She smiled back, a little more relaxed now. “Me neither.”
The beautiful waitress returned with two flutes of sparkling water, each garnished with a slice of strawberry.
Stella sipped her water and looked around. The place was wall-to-wall penguin suits and the kind of dresses her mother would have called “too much of everything”. The younger women had all apparently decided to enter a competition that was probably called
“baps out for the paps”. How else to explain the plunging necklines that threatened to depart east and west simultaneously? The hem lengths were just as bad. Bad? Stella, when did you get so old and disapproving? When a girl leans forward to kiss someone and flashes her knickers at everyone behind her, that’s when. Some of the older women looked a little more elegant, although she could still see acres of crêpey flesh. Stella suppressed a shudder.
They moved through the crowd into the ballroom, a vast, glittering space in which every surface was painted, coated or plated in gold. The room had been decorated for the occasion with thousands more of the pale-blue-and-white ribbons, glued into the standard looped format that signified an anti-this or pro-that charity appeal.
Stella was asking Riordan more about his non-drinking – it was a fitness thing, apparently, though she wasn’t entirely sure she believed him – when a hand tapped her on the right shoulder. A deep, male voice spoke. A voice with an Edinburgh accent.
“It’s DI Cole, isn’t it?”
She turned. Standing in front of her was a short man, wide through the shoulders and sporting a paunch. His immaculate dinner suit gave him a shape that was more solid than flabby. White hair cropped short and appraising eyes, crinkled with age, or experience or just a lot of laughing. His name was Gordon Wade. He was the Assistant Chief Constable for Lothian and Borders Police.
“Yes, sir. What are you doing here?”
He laughed. “We are allowed south of the border, you know. I didn’t even get frisked in Carlisle.”
Stella could feel herself getting hot. She strove to regain some kind of poise. “Sir, may I introduce Barney Riordan? Barney’s–”
“Hello, Barney, how are you?”
The two men shook hands.
“Fine thanks, Gordon. How’s Susan?”
“Och, mustn’t grumble, that’s what she always says to me. But it’s her bloody highland spirit speaking. The pain comes and goes. We cope.”