‘Well, lunch now, yes?’ Maureen said brightly, dragging George out of her glazed-eyed reverie. ‘Sandwiches is all there is, I’m afraid, but they’ll be nice ones, I promise. Come along.’
George came along willingly. There was even more she might dredge out of Maureen’s artless chatter that could be useful. All sorts of notions were crawling around in her head now. The only place where she could not see a link was between the fires and the women who had died in them and the St Dymphna’s/Connie’s factory axis. But it had to be there. Somewhere.
When she got back to her flat at last, Gus wasn’t there. He’d left a curt note. Gone back to Companies House. Might be able to get a bit more info. See you later. G. So she sat in her living room, staring out of the window and trying to think what to do next.
The conversation with Maureen hadn’t been particularly illuminating – at first. She had chattered about their lunch – smoked salmon sandwiches and miniature crab vol-au-vents – apologizing for it, quite unnecessarily, as George told her, and then slid away to talk of her work at the shop, much of it very dull. George had sat and listened, chewing her sandwiches and trying to look interested. But it wasn’t easy.
When Maureen’s talk drifted on to her family, it wasn’t quite so hard to concentrate. Jade, it transpired, was everyone’s biggest worry.
‘Her mum, you see, ran off with another man when Jade was three, and her dad – well, he’s been all over Jade ever since to make up for it. My Monty’s the same. I think they’ve spoiled her, but who listens to me? Like one of the others said, what do I know? I’ve never had to bring up a child.’ She had brooded for a moment and then brightened a little. ‘Mind you, the boys are nice to me.’
‘The boys?’
‘Oh, Philip, you know, and Patrick.’ She seemed to swell a little. ‘Dr Cobbett. Or I should say Mr Cobbett, shouldn’t I? Seeing he’s a surgeon.’
‘Oh, yes,’ George said. She put down her plate. ‘Do tell me about them.’ She remembered the tall weedy man with the fair hair and the bony look and the very expensive clothes. He’d seemed rather aloof from his cousins, who had favoured rather sparkier clothes to adorn their stocky bodies, and displayed a taste for heavy gold identification bracelets. His wrists had been innocent of anything apart from, as she now remembered, a rather expensive-looking watch. A Rolex? She thought so. Perhaps the cousins weren’t so different, after all.
Maureen needed little encouragement. She talked enthusiastically and at length about the young man who was clearly her favourite nephew.
‘He’s so sweet to me. The others tease like anything. They say he just wants to operate on me and give me a new face because he doesn’t like the one I’ve got, but I know it’s not true and that he loves me as I am. Still, he gets upset when they go on about it, the others. They say he might make me worse than I am already, and that’s why I won’t let him do it, and of course that upsets him. He’s very proud of his work.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ George said. ‘Which is his hospital?’
‘Oh, he’s in Harley Street,’ Maureen said, looking at George almost pityingly. ‘He isn’t a hospital doctor.’
George managed to hide her combination of amusement and irritation. ‘Well, yes, but the best specialists always have a hospital appointment too. It’s their NHS hospital which gives them their specialist status, you see, not where they have their private consulting rooms.’
But Maureen wasn’t listening. ‘No, he went to Harley Street very early on. No messing about, Monty said. He was to be the best, and have the best. So – Well, no need for details.’ She looked a little flustered for a moment. ‘I shouldn’t be gossiping like this. Family stuff.’
‘Oh, it’s not gossip,’ George said reassuringly. ‘It’s natural family pride. Very commendable.’
Maureen looked happier. ‘Well, I am so proud of him. Monty is too. He said to him, when he set him up in Harley Street, you just make yourself a name, and that’ll be that. I don’t want nothing paid back. Just to be proud of you, that’s enough. He’s very good, is Monty. But he does spoil Jade.’
‘It’s natural enough,’ George had said diplomatically, looking surreptitiously at her watch. If Maureen was going to start talking about Jade again she just couldn’t cope; and there was no time to waste anyway. Talk to Gus, that’s what I’ve got to do, she thought and turned a bewitching smile on Maureen.
‘It’s been really lovely being with you,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a fascinating morning. Thank you so much for letting me come.’
‘Oh, no, thank you.’ Maureen surged to her feet in a flurry of gratitude. ‘I’d never have managed on my own, and you’ve been ever so kind to me. It’s so nice having help with it all. If you’re ever free again –’
‘I’ll call you,’ George promised hurriedly, mentally crossing her fingers. ‘Right now I really must be on my way. No, it’s all right. I can find my own way out, truly I can.’
Now, sitting in her living room, she felt flat, yet restless. The morning and the new ideas it had brought to her were buzzing away in her head, and here she was with no one with whom to share them. She needed to be able to bounce her ideas off someone who would help her see them more clearly.
She did it almost without thinking. She went over to her little desk and pushed all the stuff on the working area – the pile of Lancets and British Medical Journals and Pathology journals – on to the floor and pulled out a big sheet of paper and her mug of coloured pencils. She’d do what she’d done before when she’d been in such a state. Make some sort of list.
She made a heading without hesitation. CONNECTIONS, she printed in large capitals on the top of the page. And then stopped to think. She sat staring at the window for some time, her eyes glazed but her mind twisting and turning, dredging memories and sorting ideas; then, slowly, she began. She wrote in different parts of her sheet of paper the various things that had happened in the past few weeks, and then looked at them.
What she found herself looking at when she’d done that made scant sense.
CONNECTIONS
Some of the items connected. Some didn’t. But she thought she might as well put in what connections she could. So she did.
CONNECTIONS
Two arrows neatly connected up the left-hand side and middle of her page. That was fine as far as it went, she decided, but it clearly didn’t go far enough. There were other odd events that had to be fitted in: the leg, for example, and the dog carcase. And the multitude of fibres found in them when they were examined in the morgue. So after a moment she made more headings on her paper, and another arrow. She looked again, and then tentatively added yet another arrow with a question mark. As far as she was concerned the machine at Connie’s had to be the way the job had been done, but she couldn’t be really certain, could she? Hence the question mark.
CONNECTIONS
Is any of this leading me anywhere? she asked herself. If all the items connected up it would be different. As it was, they just seemed to dangle in mid air. Perhaps she hadn’t put in all the possible elements that could be part of the equation?
Again she looked at the window, letting her eyes glaze a little. It was a vividly bright afternoon, and the sun was slanting in through the panes to lift the room to a rich glow. She could see her own reflection clearly in the glass as it shimmered slightly, so that her face seemed distorted by her relaxed unfocused gaze.
And then it happened. Sitting there, a little distracted by the heat, her mind did what it had done for her in the past – left her behind, set to work on its own and made its own connections. Distorted faces …
She found another idea had slipped to the top of her consciousness. She looked down at her page again, picked up the pen and after a moment’s hesitation found herself writing another two items.
CONNECTIONS
She sat trying to convince herself that her subliminal musings had cheated her. But hadn’t the same idea come into her head once before? She had had that ugly dream whic
h had had frightened her so, only to find herself convinced there was a connection between the two fire deaths and Gus’s case. But wasn’t she being hysterical? It was all too far-fetched, surely? And yet … Slowly she picked up her pen again and made more arrows. Two of them she gave two ends to; it seemed a logical thing to do.
CONNECTIONS
She sat for a long time after that, studying her sheet of paper, uncertain whether she’d helped herself at all. That there were some logical connections here was undoubted; but the fires? Wasn’t she stretching logic absurdly to think that Philip Cobbett had anything to do with all this? She’d only thought of him, surely, because Maureen had talked about him today. And she actually put out her hand for the bottle of Tipp-Ex to paint out that item on her sheet, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to do it.
That was the moment at which two sounds made her jump; one was the bleep Ellen had given her, which was in her pocket; and the other was her phone.
27
She answered the phone first, obviously. It was Monty Ledbetter and he greeted her with an avuncular tone that grated a little.
‘Dr Barnabas? Well, how are you? Bloomin’, I trust. I do want to thank you for being so helpful to my Maureen. She’s just been telling me about how kind you was this morning. It’s much appreciated. She needs this little job of hers; keeps her contented, you know, and having someone like you take an interest cheers her up no end.’
‘It was a pleasure, Mr Ledbetter,’ she said, too aware of the bleep, which she had taken from her pocket to stop its noise, to be as irritated as she might have been by his tone of voice. She could see the message on the little strip of screen. Phone M. U. it said. Urgent. She was itching to get this call ended and dial the number of Michael Urquhart’s mobile phone. She couldn’t quite remember where she’d put it; somewhere secure, she thought. I wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it somewhere safe and sensible, but oh God, where? She couldn’t remember. She let Monty burble on about how happy Maureen had been made by her efforts, saying nothing as she dug into the pockets of the shirt she was wearing, even though she knew she’d been wearing a different one when Mike had told her his number, and wanting to swear aloud at her own incompetence.
‘So, I said to her, no need to be shy. Dr Barnabas is like our Philip, like all good doctors, just wants to help people. It makes her feel good to help people, no need to be so worried about making use of her, I said. She’ll be glad to help any time, I said, and I’m sure I’m right, hey?’
‘Mmm?’ said George abstractedly. ‘Oh, yes, any time. Er – if you’ll forgive me now, I have to –’
‘Now, about the little matter you asked me to look into.’ His voice had changed; had become a little deeper and softer, as though he was being confidential. Silly, a part of her mind registered, to be hushed over the telephone. Unless he had a listener at his end, of course. That was possible. He was a man who liked people to know how powerful he was, how much clout he had. Maybe he did have an audience at that.
‘The chap you was enquiring about. The one that – um – isn’t at home just now.’ He spoke even more softly then. ‘The one that has a brother, where there’s what you might call a ditto situation.’
She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so agitated about the need to call Mike as well as the need to hear what Monty might have to say.
‘The Greesons,’ she said. ‘Lenny and Don.’
‘Now you be careful what you say, especially on the phone,’ he advised sharply. ‘Remember all that about Squidgy and so forth. Anyone could be listening and probably is.’
‘Hardly,’ she said a shade tartly. ‘I’m no princess and you’re not exactly – Well, anyway, what about them?’
‘You’ve no need to fret over either of ’em.’ He sounded pleased with himself. ‘I’ve got it on the highest authority – the high-est auth-or-it-y – as they’re all right.’
‘What authority?’ she asked bluntly.
‘You can’t ask me to tell you all my ways, doctor.’ He sounded quite shocked. ‘Just you take my word for it. One of ‘em – with his dog – has gone overseas. Middle East. A really good job, and very happy he is about it, I’m told. By the –’
‘Yes, the highest authority,’ she said. ‘But can you be sure that it’s true? How high is the authority?’
‘Believe me, I know the things I know. He’s gone overseas, and glad to do it.’
She thought for a moment and then said, ‘And the other one?’
‘Same thing!’ Monty sounded pleased with himself. ‘Not abroad, mind you. Oh, no. Here in good old England. Brighton, to be precise.’
‘Bright – What’s he doing there?’
‘I’m told, a job of work,’ Monty said, sounding a touch frosty now. He had expected fulsome gratitude, clearly, and all he was getting was a catechism, and he didn’t like it. ‘It’s his business, I imagine.’
‘He’s just walked out of his business! I have it on another high authority that he wouldn’t have done that easily.’
‘Not easily, no. But he got a price, didn’t he? A price he couldn’t say no to. From all counts he’d have had to be stark raving bonkers to have turned it down. Part of the deal was to go right away from this part of the world for a while so the new people could get established on the premises. He’ll come back to London I dare say, in a while, but right now he’s sitting pretty in Brighton.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ George said, more to herself than to him, and he spluttered at the other end of the phone.
‘You don’t – Well, I never thought – Why shouldn’t you believe it? I’m not in the habit of lying, you know, or of –’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Ledbetter. I didn’t mean I didn’t believe you. I just can’t imagine how Lenny could – I mean, just vanish like that! Gus has been looking for him – other people – the police have been looking for him because he’s Gus’s answer to these charges, and he’s only gone to Brighton, you say, and they haven’t been able to find him? It can’t be. I mean, if he knew Gus was in trouble on his account, he’d be back like a shot, surely?’
‘Well, that’s as may be. I told you he wasn’t much of a fella. Easy to push around, Lenny, always was. People don’t change.’
‘But all the same, a guy, a very old friend, has helped him out with a loan and all he has to do is tell the truth and the guy’s out of trouble! No one could be such a nerd that he wouldn’t do that!’
‘Don’t you believe it. People have ways of getting what they want, and if there’s someone wants to push this fella around, well, he’ll be pushed. And that’s all there is to it. I’d keep out of this if I was you. Not a lot you can do, see. Not a lot anyone can do. Look, I’ve been around long enough to understand the types on this manor. I don’t know all the ins and outs of their business, and I’ll tell you frankly, I don’t want to know. The less I’m involved, the better off I am. These people are hard cases, you hear what I’m saying? Just take my word for it, Lenny’s all right, in Brighton. Leave it at that.’
Her voice sharpened. ‘You mean there are people in whose interest it is that Lenny stays quiet? That’s why they’ve taken him away and –’
‘I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying that the blokes you was asking about are all right. Leave it at that. Gus’ll sort out his own business well enough. You tell him what I told you and leave it to him. You go on stickin’ your oar in and you could make things a lot worse. Remember I told you that.’
She became even sharper. ‘Are you warning me off?’
Now he sounded as usual, comfortably pleased with himself and his own power. ‘Now, have I done any such thing? I just gave you a bit of fatherly advice, that’s all. It’s good you want to help Gus, but like I’ve told my Maureen many a time, the best way to help your fella is to keep out of his affairs when they don’t concern you, and keep him warm and happy and well fed. Believe me, that’ll be the best thing for you to do. It’s up to you, o’ course, but I can tell you these blokes a
re all right. So, ta again for your help to my Maureen. G’bye, doctor.’ The phone clicked in her ear and settled to the steady buzz of the dialling tone.
She shoved the handset back in place and went scuttling for her bedroom to dig out the clothes she had worn the last time she had spoken to Mike and search for the missing phone number. She tried to hang on to all Ledbetter had said so that she could think about it later, and, of course, she thought (as at last she found the number precisely where she’d put it, which was in the flap of her change purse, the last place, naturally, she’d looked), to pass it all on to Mike. Maybe he could make a search in Brighton and see if what Monty had said was true?
Mike answered after a couple of rings and she had to struggle to hear him. He was clearly out of the nick and somewhere where reception on the radiophone network was not all it should be. She strained her ears to listen.
‘Hello, Dr B.! Is the Guv there?’
‘Mike? Where are you?’
‘Shadwell. Doing routine checks. Still talking to the working girls. We’re no further forward than we were, dammit. The Guv’nor – Inspector Dudley – isn’t happy.’
‘Nor am I,’ she said. ‘If he’d let me help, maybe I could give him some leads. Well, never mind. I’ll go on my own way and tell him when I’ve got there, wherever it is.’
‘What?’ he shouted. ‘I didna catch that. Say again?’
‘Not important,’ she shouted back. ‘Listen, why did you call?’
He managed to hear that. ‘I’ve got a bit of news. I’ve got a bit of news that the Guv – Gus ought to hear,’ he bawled. ‘He won’t like it but he’d better hear it.’
Third Degree Page 27