The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “OK, thank you.”

  “And if you would prefer to talk to a woman, my sister is working nearby and I can ask her to come in. Either way, our first job is to decide if what we do here can help you. No charge for that, of course.” He gave it a moment and then unleashed one of his famous and devastating smiles.

  But Polly Mainwaring didn’t seem to need gentle unpicking of a knot of uncertainty. Nor did she seem to react to the smile. She just said, “It’s my fiancé.”

  A fiancé. Salvatore caught sight of the ring. With its big rock.

  Ah well.

  “What about your fiancé?”

  “Something weird happened and I can’t get a straight answer from him. I think he’s lying to me, and that’s no way to begin a new life together.” And suddenly the controlled, businesslike face of Polly Mainwaring puckered into wrinkles of distress.

  Salvatore wanted to take her in his arms. He wanted to say, I’ll help you ditch this lying scumbag. He wanted to ask her to model for him. However, what he did say was “Tell me about it.”

  “Jack and I met at the hospital. I was visiting my Aunt Elaine. She had kidney cancer, though she’s OK now.”

  Salvatore hadn’t expected the history of the relationship but Polly seemed to want to tell it. He nodded sympathetically. And he did enjoy looking into her eyes.

  “Jack’s a nurse, and a really good one. Everyone on Auntie’s ward loved him. She’d told me about him even before I met him. But when I did, when we did, it was, like, boom. You know? Love. The real thing. Wonderful.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Months now. Seven.”

  “And you decided to get married?”

  “Six weeks ago. But neither of us wanted a bells and whistles wedding.”

  “No?”

  “The money’s better used to start us off in our new life together. Jack has plenty, but I don’t have much left over each month and my family’s just, you know, comfortable.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So six days ago we went to the Register Office to make arrangements.” Polly’s face began to contort again. “And the registrar … She greeted Jack by name. By name. ‘Hello, Jack,’ she said when we walked in.”

  Salvatore waited but there was no more. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I. I mean, how does a registrar know somebody’s name when he walks into her office? But it was more than that. Her tone … It was like she was meeting an old friend.” Polly gave a little nod of punctuation.

  “Is there some reason they shouldn’t be friends?”

  “She’s, like, fifty and talks posh. Anyway, he says they’re not.”

  “Or mightn’t she have been a patient or visitor to the hospital and got to know him as a nurse?”

  “He says no to that too.”

  “So how did he explain her greeting?”

  “He just laughed and said it was nothing. He said that she knew his name because he’d rung her to make our appointment to go in. He said that using people’s first names must be the way she puts people at their ease.”

  “And you didn’t think that was a reasonable explanation?”

  “She didn’t know my name. She didn’t put me at my ease. With me she was more a stuck-up cow.”

  OK … “And …?”

  “I’m a legal secretary, Mr Lunghi. I’ve done the job for seven years and we get cases that you wouldn’t believe. And I have a good sense of when things are right and when they’re not. And this is not right. That ‘Hello Jack’ was the ‘Hello, Jack’ of someone who knew him. There’s nothing wrong with that but then he denied it, and now he won’t even talk about it. And it’s hanging over me like a Sword of Damocles, if you know what I mean. There’s something going on, Mr Lunghi. I just know there is.”

  “You mean between Jack and the registrar?”

  “Not an affair. But they were conspiratorial. That’s the word. Conspiratorial. Even after the ‘Hello, Jack’ I saw little looks between them. I’m not a genius or anything – I’ve never had to be. But my instinct says that something’s wrong. And the last thing I want to do is marry a man, have children with a man, who is the wrong man.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Maybe the very fact he’s being evasive should be enough for me to break it off,” she said. “But I love him. I love him.” And then the dam burst. Polly started to cry.

  * * *

  “I bet she’s a babe,” Rosetta said at the kitchen table that evening.

  “Don’t be silly,” Salvatore said to his sister. But he felt his face flush. Good thing the kitchen was hot from cooking.

  “It’s the vacant look on your face when you talk about her,” Rosetta said. “I’ve seen it before. Do you see it, Angelo? Gina?”

  Angelo said nothing. Gina said, “See what?”

  “That Sally’s smitten with this Polly woman.” Rosetta turned back to her elder brother. “But calling a marriage off because the registrar greeted her fiancé by name? How flaky is that?”

  Unmarried – not even engaged recently – Rosetta was eager, even desperate, to find Mr Right. To put a wedding in doubt because of a greeting was an alien concept.

  “Polly’s instincts tell her something’s wrong,” Salvatore said. “Pass the gnocchi, please.”

  Rosetta and Mama had pitched in to prepare food for everyone but because teenagers Marie and David were out, the meal was adults-only. The special circumstance was the return of star witnesses Angelo and Gina from Crown Court in Bristol.

  However, neither witness felt celebratory. “We’re shattered,” Angelo declared as they arrived at the table.

  “Shattered?” the Old Man said. “Shattered?”

  “Like panes of glass, Papa,” Gina said. “We’re in bits.”

  The Old Man picked up a piece of bread. “Shattered? It sounds … excremental. Shattered. Doubly excremental. Huh! There’s more butter?”

  “But still you testified?” Mama refilled Gina’s wine glass and ignored her husband’s request for his own good.

  “We began our testimonies,” Angelo said. “It’s complicated, this fraud. We’re testifying bit by bit rather than giving all our testimony at once.”

  “But you two will make it clear as glass for them.” Mama refilled her younger son’s wine glass. “Until you shatter, of course.”

  “Shat-tered,” the Old Man said quietly. He held his glass out too.

  “So this Polly,” Rosetta said, “she thinks her fiancé is carrying on with the registrar?”

  “Only that they were conspiratorial. But it’s destroying her that she doesn’t know what they’re conspiring about,” Salvatore said.

  “You took the case?”

  “Of course. They hire us, we do the job.”

  “She pays, this Polly?” the Old Man asked.

  “She paid a retainer, Papa. She works for lawyers, so she knows how it all goes.”

  “Which lawyers?”

  “Baum and Carteret.”

  “Ah.” An established firm the Lunghis had often been employed by. “It explains how she knows to come to us.”

  Salvatore turned to Gina. “The new case does mean that I’ll be mostly out of the office tomorrow.”

  “I can cover it,” Rosetta said quickly. She and Gina glanced rapidly at the Old Man who was drinking.

  He saw the glances but didn’t understand them. “What?”

  Mama did. She said, “Where did you say Marie and David are tonight?” intentionally changing the subject. Everyone knew that putting the Old Man at the end of the agency telephone for a day was like rolling dice. You couldn’t be sure what he’d do.

  “They’re at the films,” Gina said.

  “Oh, isn’t that nice,” Mama said.

  “Not together, Mama. Not the same film. That would be far too easy.”

  “On a school night?” Rosetta asked.

  “They swore they’ve done their homework. Marie has lines to learn for the play she’s
in, but that’s really her business.” Gina shrugged. Both children were responsible students, although with very different interests and talents. Marie was dramatic and arty. David was scientific and mathematical. But their parents cut them both some slack. So many teenaged children were much worse.

  Rosetta said, “Where will you start with Polly’s Jack, Sal?”

  “A registrar does more than marriages,” the Old Man said.

  “True,” Salvatore said.

  “Deaths and births as well. Maybe this Jack comes in with all his babies.”

  “Maybe, Papa,” Salvatore said, “but I’m going to start by checking out where he works and where he lives.”

  “What’s his job?”

  “He’s a nurse.”

  “A nurse?”

  “Although he went to university and read Spanish,” Salvatore said. “Polly says he didn’t know what to do after university so he got a care job and one thing led to another.”

  “A nurse, he is?” the Old Man said. “Helpful to people, if he isn’t using it to kill them instead.” The table went quiet. “What?” He looked around. “You think I’m foolish now? Nurses, doctors, they know things.”

  “No one thinks you’re foolish, Papa,” Gina said.

  “Then why don’t they ask me to cover their telephone while our Salvatore goes out to hunt for this fiancé’s conspiracy?” The Old Man sipped from his wine. “Huh!”

  * * *

  Years of working cases in Bath had provided the family with many friendly contacts in the Royal United Hospital. Unfortunately the same years had seen most of those contacts move on or retire.

  When he began work in the morning Salvatore could not call on a single hospital nurse for information. However an administrative secretary was on the family’s unofficial list of informants and Salvatore’s call intrigued Dorothy Simbals sufficiently for her to agree to a coffee break in the large café area by the main entrance.

  There was one small problem. Salvatore had never met her. “But you wear a name tag, right?”

  “And you’re happy to walk around a large room looking at every woman’s chest?”

  “Happy to have an excuse,” Salvatore said.

  “Even so … Why don’t you carry … a magnifying glass. I’ll recognize you as a detective by that.”

  “I could wear a geranium in my buttonhole.”

  “Humour me, Mr Lunghi. My job here is very boring.”

  So a magnifying glass it was. With Rosetta’s help he eventually found one in Marie’s room – part of a school kit that had never been used.

  And, as things turned out, Dorothy Simbals’ chest was entirely worthy of attention. She was not a young woman, but she was in very good shape. Shape … Salvatore was pleased to meet her.

  “Can I get you a coffee? Or something else?” he asked.

  “A coffee, please,” she said. “You’ll get it cheaper from the machine over there.” She pointed. “But better if you queue at the counter.” The opposite direction.

  “Nothing but the best for you.”

  “Is the right answer.”

  Salvatore brought back two lattes and a pain au chocolat. He suggested they split the pastry when he sat. “Don’t want you to waste away.”

  “I think I’ll start wearing my name tag on my shoulder.”

  He laughed and then offered to clink coffee cups with her. “Salute.”

  “Cheers.”

  They clinked and sipped.

  Then she said, “Jack Appleby. Or Jonathan Aloysius Appleby, to be more exact.”

  “Lordy,” Salvatore said.

  “Not a name you see every day. What do you know about him?”

  “I was told that he gravitated to nursing after graduating from uni.”

  “Got his degree from Cardiff thirteen years ago.”

  “Making him …?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “What does one intend to use a degree in Spanish for?” Salvatore wondered aloud. “Teaching?”

  “Jonathan Aloysius’s CV says that he travelled for a year and then did volunteer work in a hospice.”

  “Where?”

  “Weston.” An area in the northeast of Bath. “His grandmother was there and instead of just visiting he decided to try to help out. He stayed …” – she consulted a thin file she’d brought with her – “for about a year. His next stop was to train as a care assistant. You do that on-the-job and he trained in the oncology unit here. They rated him highly and he spent a year or so here. Then he moved to another hospice, and after that to a nursing home.” She turned to a new page. “Another hospice, and then another.”

  “Is bouncing from one place to another like that the way it usually works for care assistants?”

  “I’m not an expert but probably not. Yet it happens. If you get to care – I mean personally – for people in hospices you can be affected when they … go.”

  Salvatore nodded. “And perhaps he has a special affinity with people in acute distress.”

  “All his references praise his work. Then a few years ago he did proper nurses’ training. That was in Bristol, where he was again rated highly. Then he came back here. He’s been at the RUH nearly two years and his performance evaluations have been outstanding. Care to guess what ward he works on here now?”

  “Oncology?”

  “He began there, but then six months ago he switched to maternity.”

  Salvatore laughed. “So, a new speciality.”

  “So it seems.”

  “What else is in the file?”

  “You expect a lot for a coffee,” Dorothy Simbals said.

  “Is there anything else I can do to encourage you to feel helpful?” Salvatore flashed the big smile.

  “You can understand that I’m only here because your father helped my mother when she was being badly treated by the printing company she worked for. It was years ago and your dad sorted it all out. She still mentions his name sometimes.”

  “He’s one of the good guys.”

  She returned to her papers. “Do you have Jonathan Aloysius’s home address?”

  “Yes. But I’d be grateful for anything else you have in there.”

  “References, health reports, evaluations. Nothing unusual, apart from the unanimity of people’s appreciation of him. Usually somebody finds something to complain about. Otherwise … He’s got a parking permit for his … oh, it’s a BMW.”

  “Nice …”

  “Not new. The registration number makes it … five years old.”

  “Nevertheless …” Salvatore raised his eyebrows.

  “Posh for a nurse?”

  “Maybe his grandmother left him some money.”

  “Sorry. Our records don’t include copies of the wills from near relatives.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing unusual. Except …”

  “What?” “Well, he’s unlucky to be as young as he is and be a widower.”

  “He was married?”

  “You didn’t know about that?”

  “No. Do you have any information about who his wife was, when they were married, what she died of?”

  She shook her head.

  OK. “And do you have a personal impression of Jonathan Aloysius?”

  “Never met him. But you could make up a story and go to Maternity and have a look for yourself.”

  “Or you could take me there on the pretext of showing me around. After your shift, say?” Salvatore said.

  “After my shift I’ll be heading home with my husband,” Dorothy said with a smile. “But it’s been very nice to meet you.” She stood up.

  Salvatore stood too. “You have my number.”

  “Oh, I think I do.”

  Salvatore watched her until she was out of sight. He liked her, for all the good it did him. If it wasn’t baggage in the form of children then it was the baggage in the form of husbands. Ah well.

  * * *

  “Rose can feed herself,” the Old Man said. />
  “But if she’s in the office, she won’t eat good,” Mama said. “She’ll just eat easy.”

  “So let her eat easy.”

  “When I can make her wholesome?”

  “Stop fussing.”

  “You don’t mind my fuss when I feed you just because the clock says you’re hungry and not your stomach.”

  “To feed me you have five steps into our very own kitchen. Or six. Or seven. Maybe you don’t stride out like you used to.”

  “Why don’t you make lunch for us? Save me all those steps.”

  “I could do that.” What could he make if he had to? An egg? Boiled? Two eggs, in water? How hard could it be? “Huh!”

  “Or would you prefer me to make it?”

  There was no escaping this. “You.”

  “Well, I’ll make lunch for us, the two.”

  “Good.”

  “It will be served downstairs. In their kitchen, or in the office if Rosetta insists. It will be ready in twenty-five minutes.”

  * * *

  Salvatore decided against visiting the RUH’s maternity department. As things stood, Jonathan Aloysius Appleby didn’t know him. If something came up that required surveillance, there was no point making it easy for Jack to think, I’ve seen that guy somewhere.

  Better to follow up the widower thing. But before he went home he took a detour, to the staff parking lot.

  Jack’s BMW was red. A convertible. Nice car …

  * * *

  Rosetta’s feet were on the desk. A cup of tea with feet up was her reward for bringing the agency’s invoices up to date. One reward, but she planned another. She had decided to join an online dating agency.

  It was time to be proactive. If she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in her parents’ house, she was going to do something about it.

  Lots of couples met online these days. Not always for ever but she was coming around to thinking of “for ever” as an outdated ideal in the modern world.

  It was fine for old people, like her parents. And for old-fashioned couples, like Angelo and Gina. But it needn’t be the template for a modern relationship. And a modern relationship would do her nicely now, ta very much. And where better than the internet to find one?

  Or even two.

  With that saucy thought Rosetta smiled to herself.