‘And why should the camera move? Why doesn’t it simply stay in one position?’
The old woman was taking a surprising amount of interest in the technical set-up, Paniatowski thought. Maybe that was because watching the world through the cameras was a bit like playing God.
But no, that couldn’t be it, since, from the way she was acting, she clearly thought she already was God!
‘If the cameras were fixed, my lady, we would need a lot more of them,’ Bell explained. ‘Because they move, they can sweep across a wider area, and each camera can do the work of several static ones.’
‘So there are times when parts of the grounds are not being photographed,’ the dowager countess said.
‘Yes, my lady, but not for very long. Look at this screen. The camera is on the orchid greenhouse, and now it moves away, but by the time you’ve counted slowly to ten, it will be back on the greenhouse again.’
‘I have no intention of counting slowly to ten, Bell,’ the dowager countess said haughtily.
‘Of course not, my lady,’ the estate manager agreed.
Of course not, my lady, Paniatowski echoed silently. One has servants to do that kind of thing for one.
‘But you do understand what I’m saying, don’t you, my lady?’ Bell continued earnestly.
‘Yes, your explanation was adequate, and so I do understand,’ the dowager countess said.
She moved further along the line of monitors.
‘These two cameras are on Backend Wood, one on the south side and one on the north side,’ she said.
‘That’s right, my lady.’
‘And where have those godless heathens with their filthy motorcycles set up their camp?’
‘At the north side, my lady.’
‘I don’t see them.’
‘They are camped deeper in the woods.’
‘Well, I suppose we should be grateful for that small mercy, at least,’ the dowager countess said.
She studied the two screens, watching as the cameras arced back and forth, and as she did, her lips moved slightly.
She is counting, Paniatowski thought. She’s actually counting for herself. Whatever next? Will she be wanting to take over the scullery maid’s job?
‘There is a broad strip of land in the centre which does not appear on either of the two screens,’ the dowager countess said, in an accusatory voice. ‘Why is that, Bell?’
‘I believe there are technical reasons, my lady.’
‘What sort of technical reasons?’
‘It’s something to do with angles and arcs. I’m not sure I quite understand it myself.’
‘In short, Bell, you are contemplating spending a great deal of the family’s money on a system that doesn’t even do what it’s supposed to do. Is that correct?’ the countess asked scornfully.
That was why she was showing so much interest in the cameras, Paniatowski told herself. It wasn’t that she wanted to find out how they worked. She was more interested in discovering how they didn’t work, so she would have something to humiliate Edward Bell with.
‘I could ask the installers to come back and try and find a way to include that section, if that is what you wish, my lady,’ Bell said, clearly flustered.
‘Don’t bother,’ the dowager countess said. ‘Hire more servants instead. They, at least, are reliable.’
She turned and – leaning heavily on her walking stick – left the room.
‘Do you always do that?’ Paniatowski asked Bell, when the old woman had gone.
‘Do what?’
‘Drop everything – however important it is – in order to cater to her every whim?’
‘She is the dowager countess,’ Bell said, as if that explained and justified everything. ‘But even allowing for that, I’d still like to apologize for her being so rude to you.’
‘It’s not for you to apologize,’ Paniatowski said.
Bell sighed. ‘All right, I’d like to say I’m sorry for the fact that she was rude to you.’
‘But you weren’t sorry enough to mention that she was being rude to me while she was still here,’ Paniatowski said.
She regretted saying the words the second that they were out of her mouth.
‘I should be the one who apologizes,’ she continued. ‘I know how much you love your work, and how difficult it is for you to balance the various demands that are constantly being placed on you by the family, so I can’t really blame you for keeping silent.’
‘You have to appreciate the position the dowager countess finds herself in,’ Bell pleaded. ‘For a long time, she was the mistress of the Hall, and now she’s of no importance at all. It’s very hard for her to deal with, and if – by lashing out at me occasionally – she finds her disappointment a little easier to bear, then why not? I’ve got broad shoulders.’
Yes, in a way, she did appreciate the dowager countess’s position, because she must feel a little like a DCI who had been suddenly stripped of her power, Paniatowski thought with a shudder – and a DCI, moreover, who had also just used Edward Bell as her whipping boy!
She’d have to tread very carefully, she warned herself, or she’d end up a bitter old woman, too.
‘You didn’t tell the dowager countess about the intruder, even though that would have shown her, quite convincingly, just how useful the cameras are,’ she said to Edward Bell.
‘I didn’t want to alarm her – or any other member of the family – unnecessarily,’ Bell replied. ‘If there’s a problem, then I will deal with it. It’s what I do.’
It would have been pointless to try and shake his conviction of what was right and proper – and anyway, she didn’t trust herself not to come out with something else unpleasant if they got into an argument – so she contented herself with saying, ‘Shall we go back to the tape now?’
‘Yes, that would be a good idea,’ Bell agreed.
They tracked the intruder to the edge of the camera’s range, and switched to a second camera’s recorder which picked him up immediately. And then, suddenly, he disappeared completely.
‘It seems there’s more than one blind spot in the system,’ Bell said despondently, ‘so maybe the dowager countess was right all along, and it’s just a waste of money.’
‘There are very few systems that work perfectly all the time,’ Paniatowski replied, as she fought the urge to shake him until his teeth rattled.
The sign on the frosted glass door said, ‘Knock and Enter’, but DI James did not seem to feel under any obligation to follow the first part of the instruction, and walked straight in.
The office contained two filing cabinets, a desk, and three chairs (two in front of the desk, one behind it). The filing cabinets were covered with dust – suggesting that their owner kept most of the information he needed in his head – and the only things on the desk were a telephone and an answering machine. The wall behind the desk had been painted in a rather sickly cream colour, and there was no sign of the framed pictures, certificates and letters of recommendation which most offices displayed to impress clients.
The man in charge of this small, charmless empire was rather fat, and completely bald. When he looked up and saw who had entered the office, he did not seem either particularly annoyed or particularly surprised.
‘Morning, Harry,’ James said.
The bald man smiled. ‘Morning, Mr James.’
‘I hear from my usual sources that you’ve been up to your old tricks again,’ James said.
‘And what tricks might they be?’ Elton wondered.
‘Harry here exists on what you might call the fringes of the criminal underworld,’ James explained to Beresford. ‘He very rarely does anything obviously illegal himself. Instead, he smooths the path for other people who wish to break the law. You could call him a criminal facilitator. Then again, you might choose a more technical term – like evil little guttersnipe.’
‘That’s libel, that is, Mr James,’ the bald man said. ‘I could have you up in court for that.’
‘First of all, to take me to court, you need witnesses – and you don’t seriously think that my colleague, DI Beresford here, would support your word against mine, do you?’ James asked. ‘Secondly, it’s not libel, its slander. Nowhere did I write down that you’re an evil little guttersnipe – I only said it.’
‘I stand corrected,’ Elton said.
He opened his desk drawer, took out a bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, broke off a fair-sized chunk, and shovelled it into his mouth. A look of pure ecstasy came to his face.
‘I’m surprised you let Terry Lewis pay you by cheque,’ James said. ‘I’d have thought you’d have insisted on cash.’
The abrupt change of subject did not seem to faze Elton in the slightest.
He munched the rest of his chocolate slowly, then said, ‘I don’t see why you’d be surprised, Mr James. I’ve got to put something through the books, or the taxman will get very annoyed.’
‘Five thousand pounds is a lot of money,’ James pointed out.
‘Maybe it is – if you have to live on a bobby’s pay.’
‘And what did he pay you five thousand pounds for?’
Elton broke off more chocolate from the bar.
‘The client – Mr Terrance Lewis – paid me for professional services rendered,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t care to be a little more specific, would you, Harry?’ James asked.
‘I’d love to be more specific,’ Elton replied, between munches. ‘It’s always been my policy to cooperate fully with the police. But you see, Mr James, I’m bound by client confidentiality.’
‘You do know that he’s dead, don’t you?’ James said.
Elton seemed shocked – genuinely shocked – and swallowed the remaining Fruit and Nut with such haste that it started him coughing.
‘Well, that is a turn up for the books,’ DI James said. ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’
‘How … how did he die?’
‘The usual way. His heart stopped beating.’
‘No, I mean …’
‘I know what you mean. Someone who appears not to have liked him very much bashed his head in.’
Beresford found himself wondering why Elton’s reaction to the news should be so excessive. Of course, death always came as something of a shock. The bank manager, Meacham, had been quite knocked off kilter when he’d been told of the murder, and he had probably hardly known Lewis. But Elton was not in the banking business. His business – according to DI James – was firmly anchored in the criminal underbelly of society, where murder was regarded as no more than an occupational hazard.
‘Could you … could you give me a few more details about the murder, Mr James?’ Elton asked.
James looked to Beresford – whose case it was – for guidance.
Why not, Beresford thought. If Elton had tuned into the news that morning, he’d already have the details.
‘Lewis’ body was discovered in the centre of Whitebridge late last night,’ he said. ‘As DI James has just told you, his head had been bashed in, and he’d been stripped down to his underwear.’
The words had an almost magical effect on Elton. The tension drained from his face immediately, and though his hands were still shaking as he reached into his drawer for a Mars Bar, it was no more than a residual shake.
‘Your eating habits are starting to annoy me, Harry,’ DI James said, ‘and if you feel compelled to unwrap that chocolate, then I’ll feel compelled to stuff it up your arse.’
Reluctantly, Elton laid the Mars Bar on the desk.
‘That’s better,’ James said. ‘Now where were we? Oh yes, since Lewis is dead, client confidentiality doesn’t really apply any more, does it? Which means, in turn, that you no longer have any reason for not telling us what you did for him that was worth five thousand pounds.’
Elton looking longingly at the Mars Bar.
‘I’m not quite sure that you’re right about that, Mr James,’ he said. ‘And to be perfectly honest with you, I think I’d better talk to my solicitor before I say anything else.’
The general manager of the Royal Victoria Hotel rarely thought about sex any more, but looking across his desk at the slim detective sergeant with the elfin haircut, he couldn’t stop himself wondering what it would be like to have her between the sheets with him.
‘The reason I’ve come to see you is that I’d like you to lend me your ballroom,’ Meadows said.
‘What!’ asked the manager, banishing his erotic fantasies to the back of his mind and becoming, once more, the solid, respectable man of business.
‘I’d like to borrow your ballroom,’ Meadows repeated.
‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question,’ the manager told her. ‘I have a hotel to run.’
‘So you do – and I have a murder investigation to conduct,’ Meadows countered. ‘One of your guests has been killed – it really was rather careless of you to allow that to happen, but let’s gloss over that for the moment – so we need to question all your other guests and all the hotel staff. We also need to conduct extensive inquiries in the area immediately around the hotel. The ballroom is the logical choice for our centre of operations.’
‘I do not wish to be uncooperative—’ the manager began.
‘Then don’t be,’ Meadows interrupted.
‘—but I have to think of the hotel’s image. It’s one thing to have one of our guests murdered, and quite another to have Royal Victoria invaded by heavy-booted police officers.’
Meadows sighed. ‘Let’s cut through all the crap and get straight to the reality of the situation,’ she suggested. ‘If I insist on requisitioning your ballroom – which under section 32 of the Beresford Act of 1947 I have a perfect right to do – the first thing you’ll do is get on to your mates on the town council and in the Whitebridge police force and bitch about how totally unreasonable I’ve been. And then, because you’re all probably members of the same lodge of the bare bollock and funny handshakes brigade, all these mates of yours will put pressure on the chief constable, who’ll force me into a humiliating climbdown.’
‘That’s exactly what would happen,’ the manager agreed, ‘so wouldn’t it be better if—’
‘But all that will take some time,’ Meadows said. ‘And before we ever get to that stage, I’ll already have got the food inspectors to go through your kitchens with a fine-toothed comb, I’ll have had the health and safety mob climbing over your roofs and inspecting your fire exits, and anybody who parks anywhere near the hotel will be given a ticket. I doubt there’ll be enough time to persuade the inland revenue to audit you before my boss comes down on me like a ton of bricks, but I’m certainly willing to give it a try.’
‘That’s blackmail,’ the manager protested.
‘I prefer to think of it as incentivization,’ Meadows said sweetly.
‘You’d probably lose your job.’
‘Yes, I probably would – which would be handy for you, because it would mean I could save a place for you in the dole queue.’
The manager turned the dilemma over and over in his increasingly panicking brain.
‘I suppose that if you used the ballroom, it would make the whole process considerably quicker,’ he said, finally.
‘Absolutely,’ Meadows agreed.
‘So rather than further inconveniencing the guests, it would actually make things easier for them.’
‘I hadn’t looked at it that way before, but now that I have, I think you’re quite right.’
‘Very well, since one of the things I pride myself on is being civically responsible, you have my permission to use the ballroom,’ the manager said.
‘That’s most gracious of you, sir,’ Meadows replied.
The second day of the RockStately Festival kicked off at noon, and the Midnight Crawlers had been the first band to play.
Linda Davies had worn a short, black skirt and sparkly top. She’d performed Grace Slick’s ‘Somebody To Love’, Janis Joplin’s ‘Piece Of My
Heart’, a couple of Bessie Smith numbers and a song that she’d written herself, called ‘Way Down And Low’.
She thought she’d been sensational, and a sizeable part of the audience had seemed to agree with her, so she was almost floating on air when she came off the stage.
And then she saw her brother, Dominic, standing there, at the foot of the steps.
‘That was good,’ he said.
‘Good?’ she repeated. ‘It was bloody brilliant!’
‘But that skirt’s too short.’
‘What!’
‘Your skirt’s too short. Some of the audience could see right up to your knickers.’
‘There’s at least a couple of dozen girls out there who are topless,’ Linda said. ‘There may even be some bottomless ones, for all I know.’
‘That’s irrelevant.’
‘How is it irrelevant?’
‘I don’t know them – they’re not my sister.’
This state of affairs couldn’t go on forever, Linda thought. Sooner or later, she and her brother would have to have a bloody big row, at the end of which it would be clearly established who was the boss and who was the employee.
But she didn’t want to have that row now, not while – despite Dominic’s best efforts – she still had a little of the glow from her performance left in her.
‘That security man will take you to the main gate,’ Dominic said, pointing to one of the Devil’s Disciples, who was sitting behind the wheel of a golf cart. ‘He looks a bit rough, but I’ve been assured he’s perfectly safe. When you get to the gate, you’ll find a car waiting to take you back to the hotel.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Dominic said. ‘Ted Harper’s backing band has been delayed, and I’ve promised him that if they don’t turn up by the time he’s due to go on, I’ll lend him the Crawlers. It’ll be good exposure for them.’
They’re not your band to lend, she thought. They’re my band.
But a little of the glow was still there, and she knew she would lose it if she argued with him.
‘You’ve had an exciting morning,’ Dominic said. ‘If I was you, I’d have a little rest when you get back to the hotel.’
Supping with the Devil Page 14