‘You say you didn’t actually speak to her?’ he asked, gently.
The elderly aristocrat’s face, already etched with pain and grief, went into even deeper shadow. ‘No. I decided not to – and have spent every hour of every day for the last fifty years, wishing I’d chosen differently! Perhaps my doing so could have changed whatever was to happen; and I could, perhaps, have been able to help her when she needed it, as a mother should.’ She shook her head wearily. ‘Instead, I wrote her a brief note, which I left with someone in the Box Office, saying that I’d seen her and was so immensely proud. I also said that watching her dance had made me realise, even more strongly than her leaving had done, that she had been right and we wrong. I gave her the address of my hotel, saying that I would be there until lunchtime the following day and that I would love to see her, should she wish to see me. I waited, but of course, she never came.’
‘Why did you decide against meeting her that evening and saying that to her directly?’
‘I’m still not entirely sure, Inspector, even after all these years. I think a part of it was to show I was treating her as an adult, leaving the choice of when – and if – she wanted to meet me, after what had occurred between us. But maybe I was fooling myself.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘Perhaps it was myself who needed the time. One of the hardest things,’ she continued after a short pause, her voice now tight with pain, ‘has been that I don’t even know if she got my note and knew of my love and my pride in her.’ She stopped, as her voice threatened to fracture. ‘You look an intelligent and sensitive man, Inspector,’ she continued after a moment, ‘but I doubt that you can even get close to knowing the pain and regret that have almost broken me in two every single one of the days since.’
Calderwood remained silent. He knew he couldn’t and prayed to God that he never would.
‘You mentioned agents you yourself employed. Were those in addition to the ones you’d employed with your husband?’ he asked quietly, after a moment.
She nodded. ‘Yes. By that point, my aims diverged significantly from Igor’s. He remained obdurate that we would find her and bring her home.’
‘And you, Madame?’
‘I had realised that for Ariana to do as she did, dance really was more to her than life itself. So I had decided that if, when, I found her, I would encourage her to continue in that life.’
‘And if your husband’s views remained unchanged?’
‘Had I thought that that would be the case, he would not have been made aware that I had found her,’ she said flatly, ice suddenly coating every word.
Bloody hell! thought Bulmer.
‘That, unfortunately, is as much as I can tell you, Inspector,’ she added, after a short pause. ‘I left the hotel the next day and travelled back to London.’
‘And you never heard from your daughter again?’
‘No, never.’ She shook her head. ‘Obviously, our agents picked up the local newspaper reports of the elopement and the theatre’s sudden closure. We tried to follow them up, of course, but we never got beyond the first stages. Now, perhaps, I know why,’ she added sadly.
After a few further questions, Calderwood closed the interview with a repeat of his promise to let her know immediately they had anything definite to tell her.
She nodded quietly, before adding, ‘I would strongly advise you, Inspector, to find whoever did it, before we do. Should she, as we must now assume, be dead, it would go ill with whoever did kill her, if we found him first; very ill.’
‘I must stress, Madame Kujenikov, the seriousness of the consequences to either of your sons, should they harm whoever it was, when we do find who was responsible,’ said Calderwood, coolly and formally, whist privately entirely sympathising.
She returned his look, her own now one of the coldest he’d ever seen. ‘It wasn’t my sons I was warning you against, Inspector. Good day.’
‘Phew! And that’s the gentler sex! God help us if we offend the men!’ muttered Bulmer after, having had the necessary swabs taken, he’d escorted her off the premises and returned to their office.
‘At least the second results are very clear-cut,’ Calderwood remarked calmly, though still shaken by the old woman’s courage and pain.
‘Yes and it’s curious,’ Bulmer said, nodding. ‘The DNA on the body in the box is certainly from a DeLancy. It shows many similarities with Edmund, but far less than there would be if it was a match for Gerald’s,’ he murmured. ‘I asked, yesterday, for a sample from Edgar as well, to be sure, but I don’t think there’s much doubt.’
‘No, I agree; it’s clear, I think – we’ve found Daniel DeLancy.’
Chapter 27
‘Which still keeps Gerald DeLancy centre-stage, but now as a suspect for two murders; though his motive seems unclear, to say the least! Anyway, all we have to do now is find him,’ Calderwood added, with bleak humour.
‘If he’s still alive, of course,’ Bulmer remarked. ‘When do we tell the family?’ he asked, after a moment in which they’d both grimly envisaged just how difficult a task lay ahead.
‘Not quite, yet, I think. We can’t, in all humanity, delay it for too long, but we’ll hold off as long as we can. It may give us an edge, though as yet I can’t see how!’ responded Calderwood, leaning back in his chair.
‘One bit of good news, is that we’ve now got some sort of explanation of how the closure and the building of the warehouses happened so quickly,’ Bulmer said. ‘Cerian and John have done a good job of digging stuff out,’ he added with a smile, as the young DCs came into the office. Cerian was looking as cheerful as ever, in acute contrast to her colleague, who, rebelling against his Harry Potter look-alike image, was rubbing his eyes, watering due to his very new contact lenses.
‘Excellent! We could do with something positive happening!’ Calderwood replied, himself smiling up at the young officers.
‘To be honest, sir, I’m not sure what I’ve got helps much,’ John said, unrolling an old map. ‘All this area,’ he went on, pointing to a rough circle outlined in red around the theatre, ‘was, at the time, almost empty of people. The park, shaded in green, was already there. Most of the other side of the theatre had been flattened by, apparently, the only bomb to hit the town during the war. Two terraced houses were still standing, though, where two sisters were living. One’s still alive and living in the maisonettes, built in the 1970s. She’s adamant both of them saw and heard something going on.’
‘It’s a heck of a long time ago, how can she be sure?’ murmured Calderwood.
‘Her birthday’s on the 25th and they’d been out on the town,’ John added, carefully paraphrasing what the old lady, caked in stale make-up and surrounded by a miasma of cheap scent, had actually said, which was that they were ‘out on the piss and the pull’. ‘When they were coming home, in the early hours of the 25th/26th, all the boarding was already up and they saw a man standing on the pavement just outside the screened area. She remembered him, as he was good-looking and started trying to chat them up. Another man came from behind the boarding and angrily ordered the other man back inside.
‘Did she know either of them?’
‘No. And all she could say was both he and the one who bollocked him, spoke “funnier” than she’d ever heard before and definitely weren’t locals. That’s it, I’m afraid, sir,’ he ended, unhappily.
Bulmer nodded, aware that fifty years ago, residents in the small market town, itself set in the middle of a very rural county, regarded anyone from even a few miles away, as ‘talking funnier’ than them and ‘not local’.
‘Everything helps, John, you know that,’ Calderwood said quietly. ‘It’ll fit somewhere, you can count on it,’ he added, consolingly. ‘So, Cerian, what have you dug up?’ he asked, turning to the Welsh girl.
‘You were right, sir, about needing permission for demolition and the County Council had a clearly set-out procedure for applying – unless that is, you were a crony of the then Chief Planning officer, which Gerald
apparently was, which helped considerably. Even more helpful was his friendship with the then Chairman of the Planning Committee, who was just as bent. Having both in his pocket meant that he had no trouble at all at getting, very quietly and very quickly, the permission to, supposedly, demolish the old theatre and to build the warehouse complex on the site. Nice to have friends in high places,’ she added with a grimace.
‘I assume, from your terminology, that the two gentlemen in question were “caught out” at some point?’
‘Oh yes, sir, but it was two or three years later, and over another backhander, that they were rumbled. Each got four years in prison – and then retired, to what I gather were rather opulent villas in Spain,’ she added, deadpan. ‘We’ve still a bit more digging to do, but that’s it, so far,’ she ended.
‘Good work, both of you. At least we now have something towards explaining how the impossible actually became possible,’ Calderwood said, nodding in appreciation. Though none of it explains how a group of fully grown men could do the work and then apparently disappear so completely and so permanently, he thought, wryly, as the two DCs left the office.
‘In the light of all they’ve turned up, is it worth our leaning a bit more on the solicitors?’ Bulmer asked.
‘ What’s your view?’ Calderwood asked.
‘To be honest, I don’t think we’d get anything more out of them,’ Bulmer replied, his mind going back to their interview and its somewhat surprising outcome...
*
… ‘In the circumstances, I’ll obviously do all I can to help, Inspector, but that’ll be very little, I’m afraid,’ said Gervase Robertson, a small, portly man with large spectacles and a pale, round face, set almost dead centre of which was a small button nose. He was speaking as he took his seat behind his old-fashioned desk; a task which took some doing, Bulmer noticed with amusement, watching the little man sit down and then manoeuvre his rather large belly to fit under the unmoving desk’s surface.
‘We appreciate that, sir. Obviously, we recognise there are issues of client confidentiality, but this is a murder investigation,’ Calderwood responded firmly.
‘Oh yes, I quite understand, but that wasn’t what I was referring to,’ the other man replied, pushing his glasses back into place as they slid down his nose.
‘What, then, were you referring to?’ Calderwood asked, puzzled.
‘Merely that I know nothing which can help you,’ replied the solicitor, reaching over and taking a file from the top of one of the stacks on his cluttered desk. ‘Anticipating a visit, I had it to hand,’ he smiled, flicking open the faded cover. ‘I must confess, though, the precise circumstances were unexpected,’ he added, soberly, his smile fading, as he automatically pushed his glasses, yet again, back up his nose.
‘Precise circumstances? You mean, the discovery of a body?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean, Inspector.’
‘So you’d expected a visit, anyway?’ Calderwood asked, puzzled.
‘Oh yes. Our partners at the time were told that it was more than likely, and, once the process of demolishing the warehousing was started, we were released from all the restrictions that we’d normally be under as regards client confidentiality,’ replied the other man, a slight pursing of his lips the only sign of his disapproval of what was, to him, incomprehensible behaviour.
‘Does that mean you’re free to tell us when your company received those instructions and who actually gave them?’ Calderwood asked, startled at apparently being offered a direct route to the very heart of their investigation.
‘Oh yes, but I doubt it’ll help you much, replied the solicitor candidly. ‘You see, we got the instruction fifty years ago – in writing.’
Chapter 28
‘Surely there must have been more recent contact!’ Calderwood said, stunned.
‘No, none,’ Robertson replied succinctly, shaking his head and dislodging his glasses again.
‘How on earth did your predecessors, and yourselves, manage to keep it current for all that time? Be sure of not missing what was a very precise deadline?’ Calderwood asked, well aware such a feat would be beyond his own organisation.
‘You’d be surprised at the odd instructions we’ve not infrequently received, over the hundred and fifty years we’ve been established,’ replied Robertson drily. ‘I assure you that, curious as this one was, we have others with even odder requirements attached to them; and we’ve developed systems to cope,’ he added a touch complacently; not unjustified, the young DI thought with grudging respect
‘But,’ the podgy solicitor continued, ‘ I must confess, we have a small commercial division which has been handling every aspect of the running of the complex from immediately after the warehouses were erected, so it was merely a case of simply making sure our right hand knew what our left hand was doing! I might add that the timing of everything is excellent; uncannily so, as, once all the costs of the demolition work are paid, there’ll be virtually nothing left in the account.’
‘So your commercial people know the identity of your client,’ Calderwood said, relieved.
‘Yes, but, again, it’ll be of little help, I’m afraid,’ the solicitor responded with genuine regret. ‘Everything was set up by letter. Monies to fund everything until the business was established were provided. From then on, we have run every aspect of it and banked all net sums automatically. All we’ve ever had is this,’ he added, pushing across a single sheet of paper.
Calderwood’s hopes fell as he saw that it was the address of a bank and its in-house solicitors – and they were based in Switzerland.
‘Do you reckon there’s any chance they’ll tell us anything?’ Bulmer asked as they left.
‘Doubtful, I should think,’ Calderwood replied. ‘The Swiss have opened up a bit over the last few years, but only with the greatest reluctance after intense international pressure. We’ll send off a request, of course, but I suspect that there’ll be so many delays that we’ll be retired before anything positive comes back – if it does, even then!’
Chapter 29
‘Here goes,’ murmured Bulmer three days later, anxiety clear in his face, as he inserted the disc into a DVD player.
The whole team were gathered in the outer office and the atmosphere was tense. Everyone held their breath as the small screen flickered and wavered for so long they began to doubt that anything had been salvaged from the old celluloid print. Then suddenly, the picture steadied and they watched as the screen told a story of spellbinding power.
‘Dear heaven!’ breathed Bulmer into a stunned silence, a little over fifty minutes later, as the screen went black. Looking round, he was unsurprised to see the same suggestion of tears in the eyes of many as, he knew, were in his. Cerian was unashamedly, and uncharacteristically, crying quietly.
Calderwood, in particular, was dazzled. He was a genuine fan of dance, going to as many performances of anything from classical ballet to the most avant garde modern production as his busy job allowed. Little he’d seen had bettered what he’d just witnessed, and much fell short. He knew that, quite simply, the young girl – still a teenager, for heaven’s sake! – had performed a master class. And one, moreover, which crossed the borders of the different styles of dance... and so effortlessly, he thought, shaking his head in disbelief, it was as though they didn’t exist.
Whoever had filmed the dances knew how to use a camera and each and every step and facial nuance had been caught, and in colour of a startling quality. Additionally, and, absolutely unexpectedly, each performance had been set to stunningly original music.
‘That sure was something!’ Bulmer said, after the few moments it took for him to come back to earth. Even he, who cheerfully acknowledged his complete lack of appreciation of anything remotely artistic, had been transported by the six dances immortalised on the old film.
Calderwood nodded silently. So vital and full of fire were they, that they were already etched into his mind, where, he knew, they would always rem
ain.
The first dance, wild and full of stunning fire and grace, was obviously inspired by her family’s Cossack roots. The young dancer had leapt and soared across the stage in a series of breathtaking leaps; sometimes seeming to change her actual body shape as well as its direction, even as she was in mid-air. Calderwood had watched in amazement. He knew little of the fiery dances of the region, but he recognised that the young girl seemed to be combining the gracefulness of a female dancer with the athletic demands more usually made of the male.
The second was in such contrast that, had he not been watching with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it possible that it could be danced by the same person. It was a traditional Mediterranean folk dance; the lazy, almost sensual, use of her body, accompanied by her slow, drifting steps had, seemingly effortlessly, evoked the drowsy, somnolent warmth of lazy summer days under the hot southern sun. Although she was dancing alone, such was her skill that the little audience had easily conjured up the partner she herself was clearly visualising as she danced.
The third was a ballet with all the traditional steps and movements, but transposed, somehow, into something breathtakingly different. As he’d watched the perfect pirouettes, the soaring arabesques, Calderwood realised that she was dancing part of the Bluebird sequence from the Sleeping Beauty, but the steps, and the music, were subtly different. The dance had all the elegance and lyricism of the original choreography but she, and the music, had produced a vulnerability not seen or heard in the original.
The fourth, though Calderwood didn’t know it, was the same dance that had so impressed an old, totally inartistic man who recalled it with awe some fifty years later. For this dance, Ariana was dressed in a short, pale brown suede dress and wore a head-piece resembling small antlers. She was dancing the dance of the faun, another, as far as the young DI knew, totally original piece. She flickered across the space in and out of the sunlight and shadows of a woodland brilliantly evoked by the set. Every move showed the faun’s tremulous excitement at its first adventure, interspersed with its nervousness at being out alone; perhaps for the first time unaccompanied by its mother. The haunting, ethereal notes of a flute accompanied her on her journey and stopped with her when, finally, she came to a halt and looked off-stage and saw... what? Certainly not her savage end, thought Calderwood sadly.
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