by Janet Neel
‘That table Frannie memorized could be very important,’ Henry commented, getting the point with his usual speed. ‘Does she know?’
‘No.’ Henry waited patiently so that he was forced to continue. ‘I haven’t talked to her since Saturday.’
Henry waited out another silence, then took pity on him. ‘How can I help you, John?’
‘You can tell me where to find Ketterick, when I ought never to have lost him.’
Henry considered the blotter in front of him wonderingly, but decided to try. ‘He’s looking for another job, isn’t he? Being interviewed somewhere, perhaps in Europe or even in the States. It’s an international trade at managerial level.’
‘I didn’t think of that.’ McLeish sounded unhopeful, and Henry sighed.
‘What are you worried about, lad? I mean, as you say yourself, now that the attack on Perry’s piece of fluff turns out not to be related to Britex, perhaps you are making too much of this.’
‘I know, but I don’t like Ketterick going missing. If he is an addict, he’s got a motive for being involved in theft from Britex. He could be a murderer or an accessory. And for various reasons, although you tipped me off I didn’t get on to it quickly enough. If the firm goes into receivership, it’s going to be more difficult to find any evidence.’
Henry considered. ‘In confidence, lad, precisely that is going to happen, and fairly quickly. I told Hampton this morning that the Minister had accepted our advice. That leaves them nothing else to do but to ask the bank to put in a receiver.’
‘What’s the form there? Does Hampton just leave when the receiver comes in?’ The question was desperately over-casual, and Henry decided to help.
‘Tell you what, lad. I’ll make a few phone calls, find out if any of my mates in the trade have been seeing Ketterick. I’m in meetings here until 3 p.m., then I have to go straight to a rehearsal. Why don’t you pick me up at St Margaret’s, Westminster around 7.30? I’ll buy you a drink and tell you what I’ve found. Frannie is singing too — we’ll maybe buy her a drink if she’s a good girl.’ He grinned sardonically at the receiver.
‘I’d like that, thanks … I’ll be there, 7.30.’
Henry put the phone down, pleased that his judgement of McLeish as a determined character, not one to let opportunities pass, was confirmed. He rang a colleague in personnel at Allied Textiles, and asked him as a favour to find out in the trade whether anything had been heard of Ketterick, so that he would have something to report to McLeish should it prove necessary to adhere to the convention that it was he whom the policeman had come to see. Beaming evilly on Francesca, who put her head in with a question, he decided to make this whole arrangement a surprise for her.
McLeish settled back to work, cheered by Henry’s invitation. Brady rang in an hour later to report that Ketterick banked with a local Barclays and ran a model account, never overdrawn — a circumstance suspicious in itself, Brady opined. Like Hampton he was paying a lot of maintenance to an ex-wife and children, and like Hampton he paid regularly via a standing order from the bank. Would McLeish like someone to have a word with the wife who could presumably be readily traced via her bank in Birmingham? McLeish thanked him, and said he could perfectly well call Birmingham himself and would do so. He considered the piece of paper in front of him and remembered William Blackett. Since Alutex had been taken over he was presumably on his way out, but he might know where Ketterick was. He tried the London office to be told that Mr Blackett had just left; and then rang Blackett’s house in Yorkshire, to his relief getting the housekeeper rather than Mrs Blackett, who told him that Blackett had spent the previous night in London at the Glengarry Hotel. At the Glengarry, there was some confusion as to whether Blackett had or had not checked out, so he left a message there too, and decided to get some lunch.
In a small room, on the fifth floor of the Glengarry Hotel, Simon Ketterick stirred and blearily opened his eyes, rubbing them to get rid of the grit. He focused on the bright light showing through the Glengarry’s fashionable but translucent curtains, then, more slowly, realized someone was standing silently by his bed. He moved his head sharply, feeling as usual the lurking pain at the back of his neck, but relaxed as he recognized his visitor. He felt congestion in his arm; then the sharp stab of a needle in the vein in the crook of the elbow; then the golden warming glow filled his body, killing the pain in his neck.
‘Bless you,’ he murmured, as his whole body relaxed, one arm falling away over the edge of the bed and his chin slumping on to his chest. His visitor dropped the syringe on the floor, carelessly, and reached with his gloved hand for a second syringe. He plunged its contents into the vein in the same site as the first, dropping the syringe on the floor as well. He glanced round the room, then slid out of the door, locking it and making sure that the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign was still in place on the outside.
McLeish came back from lunch and found himself drawn off the affairs of Britex by a summons to New Scotland Yard to talk to the man who had been his boss in the Flying Squad. He was offering McLeish a job at the Yard on promotion to Chief Inspector in CI, the division which deals with murders. Cheered by this prospect, which would make him one of the youngest of this rank in the Met, McLeish drove away, noting automatically a concentration of uniformed police and realizing that they were controlling the entrance to St Margaret’s, Westminster. As he pulled off the road into the tiny parking-space, two constables converged politely on him. He snowed his warrant card and asked, innocently, what was happening.
‘Some pop star in there, singing. We’re here to keep the fans out. Waste of time — the only really dodgy characters turned out to be his driver and his agent.’ The young constable was laughing, and McLeish said he knew exactly what he meant, but he knew the singer and would pop in for a moment. Leaving his car keys with the uniformed branch he edged in to the ill-lit church, sliding into an pew at the back under cover of the Aquarius Choir’s desperately uneven rendering of ‘All we like sheep have gone astray/We have turned every one to his own way.’ Indeed, McLeish thought, that was exactly what it sounded like. The conductor stopped them and made another attempt at a particularly ragged entrance, and McLeish was sure he could pick out Francesca’s steady contralto. The choir struggled through the chorus again; it was still uneven, and the conductor said as much, but added that he would have to move on if they were to complete the orchestra rehearsal before 8 o’clock.
‘Mr Wilson please,’ he called, and Perry rose from a chair at the front of the choir, looking contained and unselfconscious as he always did.
The violins played the introduction to the tenor recitative which describes the sufferings of Christ, and Perry started to sing. The hairs rose on McLeish’s neck as he sat bolt upright in the uncomfortable pew. Perry was using a harsh dry edge to his voice that McLeish had never heard before, rather than the mellifluous tones usually adopted by a tenor singing Handel. He ended the short passage and the choir came in with real feeling on the chorus, ‘He trusted in God that he would deliver him.’ That too was a bit ragged, but the conductor plunged straight on to Perry’s next recitative, which leads into the tenor aria, ‘Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow’. McLeish felt a horrified sense of desolation as the marvellous voice, deliberately hard-edged, sang on, and for a moment he felt the weight of the cross, heard the mockery of the soldiers and the night wind blowing cold over Golgotha. He listened transfixed, among a silent and unmoving audience as the magnificent, chill voice ended the second recitative.
The conductor, absolutely concentrated, with no more than a glance at Perry, went straight on with the orchestral opening to the second tenor aria, ‘But Thou didst not leave His soul in hell’ and Perry came in joyfully, using the fat of his voice, golden and mellow, the hard edge gone, in an affirmation of faith that could not, McLeish thought, covertly blowing his nose, have left a dry eye in the house. For the first time he observed that Perry was not using a score but was singing from memory, hea
d slightly back, looking like something off a stained glass window. The Aquarius Choir, listening trance-like, muffed completely the entrance to ‘Lift up your heads, oh ye gates’, and ground to a ragged halt four bars later.
‘Right,’ the conductor said, on an exhaled breath. ‘Thank you, Perry. Will you give us the last twelve bars so we can get that entry right?’ Perry, who had remained on his feet, nodded without a change of expression and gave them the last twelve bars, with all the joy and the steady faith and triumph over death sounding exactly the same. But this time the choir was ready for him, and crashed in together on ‘Lift up your heads’. Perry waited to make sure they were launched, and sat down again, gazing into space. Just at that moment one of the uniformed constables slid into the pew beside McLeish to say that they had answered his car radio for him, and would he please ring Detective Inspector Brady in Doncaster?
‘Ketterick’s wife reported him missing this morning.’ Brady was sounding tense. ‘I phoned Birmingham for you — I’ve got an ex-sergeant of mine there — and the name rang a bell. They are divorced, but she had expected him on Sunday to see the boys. She reported him missing because he never fails to turn up for the boys, and his neighbours could not find him. She was worried, she said, because she knew he had lost his job.’
‘Unusually decent behaviour for an ex-wife,’ McLeish observed, drily.
‘She’s remarried. Looks as if she walked out on him, so she feels badly. She’s expecting a call.’
McLeish thanked him, fixed himself a date with ex-Mrs Ketterick, now Mrs Laing, for the next day, then dropped back into his office and sorted out more paperwork.
He arrived back at St Margaret’s, just in time to hear the choir and orchestra taking the ‘Amen Chorus’ at top speed and at top volume. They were sounding a great deal better than earlier in the afternoon, and the conductor was grinning as he pushed them through. He beamed round him at the end, observing that if they could do it that well tomorrow, it would all be a great success. John McLeish watched from the back as the Wilson boys coalesced into a little group with Henry Blackshaw and Francesca, and, picking his moment, strolled to the front to join them, placing himself between Perry and Henry. Perry greeted him with obvious pleasure and told him that Sheena really was all right, as evidenced by the fact that she had asked for a mirror and, after one horror-stricken look, for all her make-up.
Francesca was deep in conversation with Henry and took a moment to surface. ‘Hello,’ she said cautiously, and glanced round involuntarily.
Henry looked up, sharply. ‘Ah, it’s you, lad. Yes, you do owe me a drink: I have something for you from one of my mates. Let’s all go. Come on, Francesca.’
‘I can’t. I was due somewhere else twenty minutes ago.’ She avoided looking at McLeish. ‘I really am sorry,’ she said, earnestly to Henry, who was so clearly not the real target of this apology that McLeish was torn between hope and exasperation. She gave him a hunted sideways look, closed her mouth firmly on all further explanation, and started to look for her coat. McLeish, feeling himself being sharply pushed at waist-level, looked down surprised on a very small, plump girl, surely not more than fourteen, gelled hair spiked straight up from her skull, eyes fixed worshipfully on Perry, as she pushed an autograph book at him, temporarily struck dumb by his physical presence. When he looked round again, he saw only Francesca’s straight back as she hurried to an exit, shrugging herself into her coat as she ran.
20
‘Come for a drink, John?’ Charlie turned to him, amicably. ‘What have you done with Frannie?’
‘She’s gone,’ McLeish said as neutrally as he could, but Charlie’s alarmed look at Perry said it all.
‘Oh dear. Then particularly come and have a drink.’ McLeish hesitated but found himself swept along by the boys and Henry Blackshaw. Perry turned his coat collar up and pulled a peaked cap down over his eyes as they went out into the night air, and McLeish saw Biff, the resident bodyguard, and the Wilson boys close round him protectively. ‘Perry can just about still go to a pub, but if he does this film they are talking about that’ll be an end of it. It’s a curse,’ Charlie observed.
They arrived at the pub, and McLeish found a whisky appearing in front of him, organized by Biff who was pointedly nursing an orange juice. Charlie settled himself on a bar stool beside him, and ordered sandwiches on the basis that he was likely to be carried out if he drank on top of all that singing.
‘Over four hours’ rehearsal,’ he pointed out. ‘And except for Perry, it’s not very good yet.’
McLeish agreed that Perry would have been ranked as outstanding in any company and against the background of the Aquarius Choir was ridiculously out of his class.
‘Perry will do nearly anything for Francesca, and quite a lot for the rest of us. It may not be the same, of course, if he marries Sheena.’ He paused, and took a long swallow of his whisky, while McLeish thought that this was a sensible one, this dark blond changeling, unlike the rest of his damned family.
‘John. Are your intentions towards my sister honourable?’
McLeish choked on his whisky, totally taken aback. ‘I’ve only known her three weeks.’
‘When did that ever make any difference?’
‘No, all right. Yes they are; or they were, I suppose.’
‘And you somehow indicated this to her?’ Charlie, embarrassed but dogged, was watching his drink.
‘Yes.’ McLeish finished his drink, and looked round for the barman but found Perry at his side who forestalled him. ‘I suppose that was a mistake?’ he observed, feeling a double whisky start to take effect on an empty stomach and too little sleep. The brothers gazed sadly into their glasses.
‘I blame the television,’ Perry said suddenly to his tonic, and both McLeish and Charlie blinked at him. ‘I’ve read books you know — I know you don’t believe I can read, but I can — and before we had television women used all sorts of wiles to get men to marry them, and men spent all their time worrying about being trapped into matrimony.’ He glanced slyly at McLeish. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it, these days? Where have all these women gone? Mine tells me she is never going to marry anyone again. My own sister is rejecting good offers out of hand. We chaps are going to be reduced to desperate measures like tricking them into getting pregnant, or going off with other women to make them jealous, until finally they give in, and we can drag them kicking and screaming to a registry office.’ He shook his head, sadly, sparkling with amusement, his audience laughing with him. McLeish decided he could see the point of Perry; he was the family clown, the one who could take the sting out of a situation with a joke.
‘Was it like that when you were young, Henry?’ Perry was demanding of his sister’s boss.
‘Oh aye.’ Henry, heaving with laughter, was prepared to play along. ‘Mothers gave dinner parties and tried to lure young men who had got into decent accountancy firms. All of us with Prospects were very much courted.’
‘Mind you, this is 1863 we are talking about here,’ Charlie observed with privileged cheek, and McLeish found himself laughing along with the rest, his bruised feelings considerably soothed.
‘Where’s Francesca?’ Jeremy, appearing innocently from further down the bar, was nearly annihilated by the battery of scowls, and Charlie told him testily that no one knew. John McLeish, observing the sudden, instantly checked, turn of Perry’s head, decided that he probably did know, and, whatever he felt about it, was not going to give her away.
‘Mind you, Frannie and Sheena both had one bad marriage, and that puts them off,’ Perry said lazily, catching his thoughtful look.
‘As John may not know, her first husband turned out to be a real shit. Sapped her confidence completely,’ Charlie offered.
‘I’ve met him. He still rattles her.’
‘Poor Frannie,’ Perry said, dreamily. ‘She had to go everywhere in the three-piece suite — you know, suit, matching hat, gloves. None of it worked, she still didn’t fit in with all t
hose army people.’
‘Some of her clothes still look rather like that,’ John McLeish, halfway down his third whisky, observed. To his surprise and pleasure, Jeremy, who had been sitting silent and crushed, burst out laughing, showering peanuts over the bar.
‘Anyway,’ Charlie said, quellingly, ‘she once said to me she was never going to bend herself out of her natural shape for anyone, and it seemed to her that all marriages involved women taking up ridiculous postures in relation to very ordinary men, and never again for her.’
John McLeish contemplated the vision of Francesca trying anxiously to fit herself into an alien military society, pushed on by a man who undermined her with every word, and despaired. ‘Why ever did you let her marry him?’
The Wilson boys gaped at him, then looked at each other helplessly, much as if they had been asked to explain the rules of cricket in Russian.
‘There were only four of them to stop her?’ Henry suggested, watching them with grim amusement.
The brothers slanted resentful looks at him. ‘Well, she’s our elder sister,’ Charlie said, glancing to Perry for support. ‘Yes, all right, John, I suppose it sounds pretty wet but she was twenty-two, I was twenty, Perry eighteen and the twins sixteen. I mean, she had always been the one who knew what to do. It never occurred to any of us that she had no idea what he was like and was just marrying a pretty face.’
‘She would never have taken any notice of what we said anyway.’ The other twin, Tristram, had arrived from his Bach Choir rehearsal.
McLeish sighed and finished his third whisky, which was going down grateful, in Bruce Davidson’s parlance. He realized he was swaying on his feet, and said as much to Perry who, without apparently doing more than mumur something to Biff, moved the whole party to an inner room where they were served steak and chips in an amazingly short time. He found himself sitting with Henry Blackshaw and Martin Bailey, as well as the Wilson boys. He pushed his plate aside with some chips left on it.