(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  Help me find Amanda.

  Brian Trussler was not heading home.

  At the top of Constitution Hill, entering Hyde Park Corner, the green cab should have looped round to Park Lane, but instead it turned off left down Grosvenor Crescent behind the Lanesborough towards Belgrave Square, and Michael, before he could follow, had his exit route cut off by a bus.

  ‘Bastard, damn you, get out of the sodding way,’ he mouthed angrily, swerving over into the extreme right-hand lane without looking, without caring what the hell might be there, his only option now to do a complete circuit of Hyde Park Corner, and pray.

  He ran the red light, slewing round the first corner, tyres yowling, then wove through a gap, forcing a despatch motorcyclist to swerve, through another, blasted his own horn hard now as both he and a black cab made for the same gap. At the last moment the cab gave way and he was heading round the outside lane, playing chicken with a bus thundering up from Victoria. He braked sharply, swept across right behind it and made a left turn.

  Now he was out of the murderous traffic and accelerating hard down past the Lanesborough, into Belgrave Square, hunting with his eyes for a bottle-green movement, checking the first exit, the second, and then he glimpsed it, fleetingly, on the far side of a junction, before it disappeared down Chesham Place heading towards Sloane Street.

  He threw the Volvo up to the white halt line of the junction. Traffic was streaming down Belgrave Place, and he couldn’t wait. Give way, you bastards, let me out! He started nosing the Volvo out, bullying his way into the centre of the road until a car braked with an angry blast of its horn.

  Michael floored the accelerator, the front tyres scrabbled for grip for a second, the nose of the Volvo lifted and yawed, the steering wheel kicked hard in his hands, then he was thundering down Chesham Place, rev counter flying, scanning the road for stray pedestrians or cyclists, and he caught another sight of Trussler’s cab, crossing the lights at Sloane Street into Pont Street.

  The lights stayed green long enough for him. He overtook a line of cars, and now, pulse hammering, he was right up close behind the cab again, and braked hard, killing his crazed speed. He could see Trussler’s head through the rear window, moving animatedly as he talked on the phone.

  The cab threaded a route along Chelsea back-streets towards Fulham, and following it was easier now. They emerged into the Fulham Road, crossed the Beaufort Street lights by the ABC cinema, then suddenly the cab braked and made a sharp left. Almost immediately it went left again into a smart, expensive-looking residential mews. Michael stayed back, watching it go down the cobbles, then stop outside a house.

  He drove into the mews and pulled up far enough behind a parked Saab to keep a clear view. Trussler climbed out, paid the driver, then rummaged in his pocket. To Michael’s surprise, he pulled out what looked like a set of keys, walked up to the front door and put one in the lock.

  Did the bastard have a secret lair? Was this where he was keeping Aman –

  His speculations were interrupted by the door opening. A striking-looking woman with long brown hair erupted out of it, threw her arms around Trussler’s neck and embraced him passionately.

  Michael watched in amazement as Trussler kissed her with almost savage abandon, right there on the doorstep. They were mauling each other and she, wearing what looked like a dressing gown, was almost ripping off his clothes right there. After some moments their lips broke free, and their faces pressed together, they mouthed something to one another. They both grinned, then they kissed again unashamedly, like a couple of courting kids, before going inside and closing the door.

  Michael stared dumbly, trying to take all this in. Was this a new girlfriend since Amanda? Or had Trussler been two-timing Amanda as well as his wife? He had a key to this place, so did he own it? Was this his secret knock shop? Or had this woman given him a key? If she had, the relationship must have been going on for some while. How long? Since Amanda had dumped him, or before that?

  Whatever, his theory that Trussler might have kidnapped Amanda out of jealousy was fast heading south. He didn’t look like a man capable of caring enough for anyone to want to bother hurting them.

  Michael gave them twenty minutes, hoping to catch them off-guard. Opening his Mac, he tried to get his head around a lecture on obsessive compulsive disorder he was due to give at a conference in a fortnight but he was too distracted to concentrate.

  A sleek Burmese cat gave him a cursory inspection, then disdainfully entered a flap in a garage door. A woman with punk hair and designer jeans strutted past with a clutch of Yorkshire terriers yapping on leads. A dusty Porsche 911 arrived home, its driver, a tired-looking man in his early thirties, in pinstriped trousers and red braces, hauled himself out, then ducked back into the car to retrieve his briefcase.

  Michael waited until he had entered his house, then walked along the mews, up to Trussler’s door and rang the bell.

  There was no response. He gave it a reasonable length of time, then rang it again, this time for longer, then repeated the ring again twice more in rapid succession.

  After a few moments he heard footsteps. The door opened and the woman he had seen earlier stared out at him, displeased. ‘Yes?’

  A slight accent – Italian, he thought. She was good-looking, not as beautiful close up as she’d looked from a distance, but there was an overt sexuality about her, even more so with her makeup smudged, her hair awry and her breasts loose inside the towelling dressing gown she was holding closed with one hand.

  ‘I need to have a word with Brian Trussler,’ he said, and caught the flash of panic in her eyes.

  Tightening her gown around her, then folding her arms, she replied, ‘Who?’

  ‘Brian Trussler.’

  She shook her head and said, ‘I’m sorry, you have the wrong house.’ She reached back to close the door.

  She was so convincing that Michael found himself considering the possibility that he had followed the wrong person, except that that flash of panic he had seen had given the game away. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said firmly. ‘Look, it’s very important. I just need a couple of minutes of his time.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you have the wrong house.’ She tried to close the door in his face, but Michael lurched forward, placed his foot over the sill and against the jamb.

  She flared in anger, ‘Get out!’

  Michael forced the door back a few inches. She was stronger than she looked and resisted hard. But he held steady, easing himself in.

  ‘Get out!’

  Fear as well as anger in her face now. She smelt strongly of a classy perfume he did not recognise. Glaring at him, face to face, confrontational but nervous, unsure of her ground, she let him pass.

  There was a staircase immediately in front of him and as he climbed it, her tone changed. ‘Brian!’ she warned. ‘Brian!’

  He reached the landing and pushed open the door on his right, but that went into an empty kitchen and dining area. Down the short corridor he heard music, Luther Vandross singing, it was coming through an open door ahead of him. He walked in.

  Dimmed lights. A candle burning on a bedside table; double bed with black satin sheets and lying on it, naked, cosseting an erection in his hands like some sad little Plasticine tower he had just made, was Brian Trussler.

  As Michael entered the room, he dived for a sheet, pulling it over his midriff with a mixture of surprise and alarm. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Brian, I don’t – I couldn’t stop this man!’ the woman called behind him.

  Michael marched over to the bed. ‘You didn’t have the courtesy to return my phone calls.’ He glanced over his shoulder at the woman then back at Trussler. ‘I think you’d rather hear what I have to say in private.’

  ‘You want to get the fuck out of here before I call the police?’ Trussler said.

  ‘Amanda Capstick,’ Michael said, and gave him enough time to absorb this. ‘You and I are going to have a chat about her – you want to ask your frien
d to leave the room? I don’t mind if she hears about her.’

  Trussler’s eyes widened. He stared back at Michael warily, then he said, ‘Gina, five minutes, OK?’

  She gave Michael a scalding look, glanced back at Trussler for reassurance, then went out.

  ‘Close the door,’ Trussler said.

  Michael shut it.

  Trussler heaved himself up in the bed. There was a half-empty tumbler containing what looked like whisky on the rocks on the table beside him, as well as an open packet of white powder and a clear Perspex biro casing with no innards. ‘What’s all this about?’

  Michael glanced away, checking out the room. Erotic paintings, a massive mirror on the wall beside the bed. Maybe she was a hooker. Unlikely: hookers didn’t greet their clients the way she had him. He turned back to Trussler and studied his face carefully as he said, ‘My name’s Michael Tennent. Amanda and I have started going out. I last saw her on Sunday afternoon, when she went off to her sister for tea.’

  ‘Lara?’ he said, sharply.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know that she’s missing.’

  ‘Her secretary told me. Yup.’

  ‘You don’t seem very concerned. Is she just one of a whole string of mistresses that you run?’

  ‘You have sixty seconds to get out of this house, Mr Tenby. OK?’

  Michael scooped up the packet of white powder. Trussler sat up vigorously and made a grab for it, but Michael stepped back out of reach. ‘I’m a doctor, you little shit, OK? You want me to flush this down the toilet or take it to the police?’

  Trussler rolled out of the bed and lunged at him. Michael parried his arm, the jolt sending the cocaine flying, and brought his foot hard up between Trussler’s legs. The film producer doubled up, making a metallic gurgling sound like water in a drain, pressed his hands to his crutch and rocked backwards and forwards, gasping.

  Michael marched over to the phone, lifted the receiver. ‘Here, call the police – want me to do it for you?’

  Trussler sat on the bed, naked, clutching his groin. His head lolled forward and he retched, but didn’t throw up. ‘What do you want?’ It came out as a hoarse gasp.

  ‘I want to know where Amanda is.’ Michael replaced the receiver.

  Trussler closed his eyes. ‘Jesus, man,’ he lolled forward again, ‘she dumped me. I haven’t seen her for – I don’t know – two, three weeks.’

  ‘Why aren’t you more concerned?’

  He opened his eyes again. ‘She’s a very independent lady. Needs a lot of space. That’s her way of coping with pressure.’

  ‘Has she disappeared before?’

  ‘I really think you’re overreacting, Mr Tenby. If you’ve been after her this obsessively, I’m not surprised she’s disappeared. She’s probably terrified of you.’

  Michael looked at him with loathing. ‘It’s you she’s frightened of, shall we get that clear?’

  Trussler pointed at the door. ‘Out. Now. You think she’s missing, go to the police, that’s what they’re for. Just what the hell do you think gives you the right to barge in here and start interrogating me?’

  Michael grabbed the man’s thinning strands of hair and jerked him to his feet, pulling his face right up close to his own. ‘I’m in love with her,’ he said, through clenched teeth. ‘That gives me the right to barge in anywhere. I’ll go to the ends of the earth to find her and, my Christ, if I find that you’ve done anything to her, or there’s anything you know that you’re not telling me, I’m feeding your balls to your neighbour’s Burmese cat. Understand?’

  Michael had to shake him twice before he nodded, and not until then did he release his grip on the man.

  ‘I love her, too,’ Trussler said.

  ‘Sure, I can see how concerned you are for her,’ Michael replied. ‘It was more important for you to come round here for a shag than return my call. My God, you’re really concerned, aren’t you?’

  He turned and marched out of the room.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  The car was falling apart. It smelt horrible. The M1 was horrible too, rain-lashed, roadworks, contraflow, red and white cones as far as the eye could see. An endless convoy of lorries kicking up spray that was denser than fog.

  The wipers squeaked. Every few minutes the glove compartment lid would spring open and crack down on Glenn’s knees. A load of wiring dangled loose beneath the dash and he was careful to avoid getting his feet tangled in it. It took the CID about two years to trash a pool car, and this Vauxhall was on the wrong side of its third birthday. Someone had smoked two million cigarettes in here. More recently, last night probably, someone had thrown up in the back. At eight o’clock in the morning, Glenn didn’t know which was worse: the smell of the vomit or of the Dettol that had been splashed around to mask it.

  Mike Harris drove. They were heading north, and the Watford Gap service station was coming up in a few minutes. They were stopping there for breakfast. Glenn was tired and hungry; he’d been up most of the night, scanning through two more books on post-mortems and thinking. When he finally lapsed into sleep, he dreamed of a woman with a plastic bag over her head, struggling for air.

  Mike Harris had a strong, kind face. He was wise, solid, he knew the ropes, understood people, had long ago sussed how the world worked. He always reminded Glenn of the saying, ‘a good man in a tight corner’.

  In cramped moulded chairs, they faced each other across an absurdly narrow Formica table. Fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, black pudding, fried bread, the works. While they ate, they talked. In half an hour they would arrive at Luton and they’d be accompanied back to Hove by the prisoner turned informer, who was hopefully going to help them with their drugs case, Operation Skeet. Right now Glenn had his far more experienced colleague to himself, and he’d made use of the journey by giving him all the background to his concerns about Cora Burstridge.

  Mike Harris scooped beans onto a slice of bacon and forked the heap into his mouth. While he was chewing he asked, ‘Did you go to Hannington’s where she bought the Babygro?’

  ‘No, I didn’t think of that,’ Glenn replied.

  ‘Whoever served her, they’d remember whether she was with someone or on her own.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll check that.’ Glenn drank some tea, and then said, ‘Mike, what do you really think? That I should accept what Digby said and drop it?’

  ‘No. If you really feel this strongly, do a G30 report and give it to the governor.’

  ‘DCI Gaylor?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a very accommodating guy. Put on the form all the inquiries you’ve done and the reasons why you believe this is suspicious – put down exactly what you told me. Tell him that if he can’t afford to spare you the time, you’ll work your two rest days this week, if you can just work solely on Cora Burstridge on those days. He might agree to that, so long as you don’t want to start spending money.’

  ‘On forensics?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ The detective constable looked at his watch. ‘Eat up, we’re running late.’

  Glenn chewed a large slice of sausage. ‘I need Forensics to take some prints, and to look at a broken lock for me – I think that’s crucial,’ he said, a little despondently. ‘I need to have them there today, somehow, her daughter arrives tomorrow.’

  They finished their breakfast in silence. Then, as they were walking past the slot machine arcade, Mike Harris said, ‘Look, I’ve been a copper for thirty years. When we get back, go and speak to Ron Sutton in SOCO in Brighton. Mention my name and ask him if he’ll do you a favour. He owes me.’

  Glenn thanked him. ‘I know him,’ he added. ‘Good bloke.’

  They ran across the car park, through the torrenting rain, back to their car. As they drove down the slip-road, Mike Harris said, ‘Thursday night – you doing anything, or are you on lates?’

  Glenn looked out through the rear window at the traffic. ‘No. I start lates next Monday.’

  The detective accelerated hard, pulling out i
nto a gap. ‘I’m going to a leaving do in London, chap I’ve known for years, did the initial CID course with him in ’seventy-nine. He’s been seconded to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. Should be a good evening, doing all the sights of London booze-wise and finishing up in Soho with a Chinese. Fancy joining me? Might be some good contacts – there’ll be some brass there. Never know who you might meet who could help your career one day.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d like to come, thanks, thanks a lot.’

  ‘Get a pink ticket from your wife.’

  ‘No problem,’ Glenn said, with bravado, although it was a problem. Ari wasn’t jealous, but she had a thing about men and stag nights.

  As if reading his mind, Mike Harris said, ‘Tell her it’s work.’

  ‘We never lie to each other.’

  ‘You don’t have to lie.’

  ‘I’m not scared of her, or anything like that.’

  Harris grinned and said nothing.

  Soon Glenn couldn’t stick the grin any longer. ‘I’m not,’ he insisted. ‘Really I’m not!’

  ‘There’s a train from Hove station at five twenty. We’ll take that, OK?’

  ‘What do I wear?’

  ‘Anything that won’t show beer stains or lipstick.’

  Chapter Sixty-four

  wednesday, 30 july 1997. 8.35 a.m.

  The Botvinnik queen’s rook defence! This is an incredibly old move! Deeper Blue used a variation of this in game three against Kasparov in 1997. And just now my friend Jurgen Jurgens, in Clearwater Springs, Florida, has used this same move.

  It is important to keep up my chess games on the Internet. Chess exercises the brain and I am worried about these gaps in my thinking that seem to be happening with more frequency. It’s quite scary that chunks of time can go by of which one has no recollection. I really cannot account for much of Monday. I forgot the woman – the thing – it! No water, no food, nothing.

  I’m not that bothered. Any bitch prepared to be penetrated by Dr Michael Tennent deserves whatever she gets.

  So maybe it wasn’t that I forgot the bitch, after all. Perhaps it was my subconscious taking over and punishing it by ignoring it. We should all let our inner voices take control from time to time. Let them have their say. We let them take control when we’re driving down the motorway sometimes, and they don’t do a bad job. Maybe we all need to have a little more faith in ourselves.