THE GAUDY SHADOWS

by John Brunner

  On seeing Laird, they stopped dead. Medea was the first to recover.

  “Well!” she exclaimed. “Sammy’s friend from America! Dr Tileman, you didn’t tell me he was a friend of yours as well!”

  Between rolled-fat lids Tileman’s eyes bored into Laird’s. He said, “To be exact, he is not, although it was he who was so kind as to tell me where you were staying in London.” He pushed the door shut with his heel. “I trust that Dagmar has been properly looking after you, Mr Walker?”

  Dagmar turned blindly and half-ran into one of the rooms leading off the living area, slamming its door behind her. Tileman gave a monstrous laden shrug.

  “What do you do to that girl?” Laird demanded. And repeated his earlier question: “Beat her, maybe?”

  “You find her manner strange? Yes, many people do. But you must appreciate that like myself she is a refugee from Eastern Germany, and her childhood was not… shall we say not very enjoyable? Well, my dear!” he added, turning to Medea. “Sit down, please. Will you join Mr Walker and myself in a drink?”

  “Not just now, thank you.” Moving to a chair, Medea eyed Laird with a speculative expression. “But I must take the chance of thanking Mr Walker—Laird, isn’t that right? Laird!—I should thank you for giving Dr Tileman my number.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t mind,” Laird murmured.

  “Mind? Quite the opposite! I find the whole thing absolutely fascinating.”

  What “thing”?

  Laird’s glance switched sharply to Tileman. For the first time the gross man showed signs of being disconcerted.

  “My dear Mrs Logan!” he said. “I’m sure there’s no need to bore Mr Walker with details of our business.”

  She turned to him. Her face said, more clearly than words: You mean he doesn’t know?

  Without moving a muscle of his own features, Tileman conveyed the answer through sheer impassivity: No!

  For a single heartbeat Medea looked surprised. Then she relaxed into her chair.

  “But since we haven’t very much time,” Tileman purred, “possibly you’ll forgive me for speaking first to Mr Walker. Ah… What is it that brings you here, in fact?”

  Laird took a deep breath. “I heard you were one of the people who obtained a loan from the company Sammy used to run, Barsamby Loans. I’ve been vaguely thinking of setting up a small firm of my own here in England, so I thought I might ask you how you get on with Sammy’s partner, Skelton. I guess he must be in sole charge of it now.”

  There was a brief silence. Tileman looked thoughtful. He was on the point of answering when Medea spoke up.

  “No, Skelton isn’t in sole charge, Laird. I’m taking over Sammy’s directorship, and whatever I can do to help you I’ll be glad to.”

  Ah!

  “That’s very generous of you,” Laird smiled. “Actually, I guess, there was no need for me to come calling—I could have asked you on the phone—but thank you, anyway, because my visit has certainly paid off. You have some business of your own to discuss, though, haven’t you?”

  Tileman said frostily, “Yes!”

  “In that case I’ll let you get on with it undisturbed.” Laird drained his beer in three gulps and turned to the door. “It’s been a pleasure to see you again, doctor—Medea!”

  “You know where I’m staying,” Medea smiled. “Give me a ring and we’ll get together so we can talk over your plans.”

  “I certainly will,” Laird promised, and took his leave.

  SEVENTEEN

  He turned into the pub with the trees in tubs outside, and over beer and sandwiches pondered what he’d learned so far today. Blurred, nebulous, yet disturbing, the outline of a pattern was emerging.

  It makes sense this way. Tileman secured a loan from Sammy’s company for a business that Sammy wouldn’t have approved of if he’d known all the details. But he left it entirely to Skelton. Probably he was sympathetic to an East German refugee and said okay, go ahead, just don’t bother me about it. Later on, though, Sammy found out what his money was being used for, and…

  And heart-failure. No matter what angle he approached the mystery from, he kept running slam against the fact that a top police pathologist had staked his reputation on that verdict. It was no good saying he didn’t believe the simple explanation. He had to find a better alternative, and then prove it.

  He wrestled with the problem until he finished his lunch, and then headed back to Paymaster Mews.

  But the outside door of number sixteen was locked, and his ringing produced no response. Shrugging, he turned back, and as he passed the doors of the workshops at the end of the mews Pentecost hailed him.

  “Mr Walker! Are you looking for Miss Logan?”

  He emerged from shadow, rubbing his hands on a rag. Laird nodded, and the mechanic’s face fell.

  “I thought she might have been in touch with you. She looked in about an hour ago to say she was going home to Scotland.”

  “But she can’t have sorted everything out yet!” Laird exclaimed. “Oh well, it’s her funeral, I guess… Did she say anything else?”

  “Yes, sir. She had a long talk with our Mr Halliard about the Jensen, and left us a key so we can get into the garage and show it to interested customers. If you’d like to have a word with him…?”

  “I surely would,” Laird agreed.

  Within the hour, he had become the provisional owner—subject to the money being cabled over from his New York bank—of Sammy’s famous silver-plated car. Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Mr Halliard promised to attend to all the incidentals such as insurance and transfer of registration, and at Laird’s insistence drafted a cheque right away for the sale price, less commission, in favour of Polly Logan.

  With the keys for the car and its garage jingling in his pocket, he went back to his hotel. Another message was awaiting him, and this was more of a surprise than yesterday’s call from Courcy. It wasn’t from Polly, as he’d expected, but from a firm of property dealers who asked that he call them as soon as possible.

  A bass voice talking too close to the phone, making the earpiece boom, informed him that Miss Logan had put the disposal of 16 Paymaster Mews into their hands and suggested that if a certain Mr Walker cared to rent the premises while they were finding a buyer he could do so at whatever they agreed as an economic figure.

  Laird cocked an eyebrow and ran some rapid mental calculations, knocking thirty per cent off the cost of a room in this hotel and proposing that as a basis for argument. Later he decided he should have made it fifty per cent, because the bass voice became suspiciously cordial and offered to send a clerk around to the house immediately. By six p.m. he had paid a month’s rent in traveller’s cheques and had two more keys to add to his collection.

  There were a string of minor things to attend to, such as having the gas re-connected, but those could wait over until the morning. For tonight…

  He poured himself a drink from Sammy’s liquor cabinet, raised the glass in a silent toast to his late host’s memory, and went to the phone.

  Shortly it said, “Hotel Rapallo!”

  “Mrs Medea Logan, please,” said Laird.

  EIGHTEEN

  Purely because he wanted to have a word with Bitchy and find out if the grapevine had yielded any information about Tileman, he suggested taking Medea to the Lizzie Borden. She was willing enough; the club was new since she last visited London, but she said she’d heard about Bitchy.

  Before going to collect her, Laird issued himself a stern injunction. For all he knew, Medea might have done her best to keep her marriage to Sammy going in spite of the problem which he’d learned about from Shannon, and only agreed to a separation when it was inevitable. He must grant her the benefit of the doubt. Besides, even though she had behaved snobbishly to Polly at their first meeting, she had apparently insisted on that repulsive red-faced lawyer Hines doing something to help her sister-in-law instead of leaving her to fend for herself. She did, after all, have good grounds for resenting Sam
my’s family if the breakdown of her marriage had indeed been due to the influence of his upbringing.

  Though anyone who got on as well as she seemed to with a person as repulsive as Tileman…

  He forced himself to discount that. He had nothing concrete against Tileman. But a little goblin at the back of his mind insisted on adding, “Yet!”

  When Bitchy came on for the first set of the evening, he was still making all the right allowances—thanks, he concluded cynically, to more than a half-share in an exceptional bottle of Burgundy and ordinary male willingness to forgive a woman plenty of faults provided she was attractive enough. For some men, he thought, Medea’s looks could excuse major crimes.

  Tonight she was wearing a tight green sheath covered with silver lace that hugged her body as closely as a lover. Ever since she arrived she had been drawing envious glances from the dollies around the room. She could not get away with the ultra-with-it fashions they were wearing, but equally they would never have dared show themselves in an outfit that called for as much elegance as Medea’s. Laird had the impression that for once half the pretty girls in sight were wishing they could be a decade older.

  Additionally, she knew how to flatter a man by listening to him, a rare gift, and she was lavishing her talent on Laird.

  No wonder Sammy fell for her so hard!

  “That is a remarkable artiste, your Bitchy Legree,” she said as the first set came to an end. “I’m reminded of Emmy Cocotte. Do you know the Abreuvoir in Nice where she performs?”

  “Only by reputation,” Laird said. “Last time I was through Nice I was on the bum.”

  She chuckled. “That fits with my impression of you as un selfmademan.” She gave the term an impeccably French pronunciation. “But cosmopolitan and adventurous to the point where you never let mere lack of funds interfere with your wish to explore the world. Am I right?”

  She drew a mother-of-pearl cigarette case from her evening bag. Laird offered his lighter, and she drew his hand close with an ostensibly casual touch.

  Allowing the first smoke to wreath from her finely sculpted nostrils, she went on, “But you certainly don’t seem to be—what was your phrase?—‘on the bum’ any longer!”

  Watching her face to see how she reacted, Laird recounted the chain of events that had led to his present wealth. Her self-control was excellent; only a faint widening of her eyes betrayed any hint of envy. And instead of commenting on the tons of gold he’d acquired, she remarked on a totally different point.

  “So you’ve been all over Central America too, and Mexico!”

  Key fact established: I rate higher on her scale of values than someone who came out of a Scottish scrapyard!

  Aloud, Laird said, “Do you know that part of the world?”

  “Never,” she sighed. “Though I’ve always wanted to. Most places have become homogenised, haven’t they? You know what I mean? Either you endure unspeakably primitive conditions, or you exchange one air-conditioned hotel for another. I’ve always been fascinated by the culture of the Aztecs and the Incas, but how much of that can one experience from the tourist standpoint?”

  So is acting like a tourist compulsory?

  “I suppose you saw all the famous remains?” Medea pursued. “Chichen-Itza, Macchu Piccu?”

  “Mm-hm. One time, I remember, when I was working with this documentary movie company, I climbed to the top of a Toltec pyramid to watch the sun go down, and I got so involved thinking about where I was and who else had been there centuries before I was born that the next thing I knew there was a search party yelling for me in case I’d fallen down and bust my leg.”

  “Oh, obviously you’re one of the lucky people who were born high!” Medea said with a laugh. “I do envy people like you! My imagination doesn’t grab hold of me that way, much as I’d like it to. You do enjoy that kind of experience, don’t you?”

  There was something in her eyes that were making Laird’s scalp tingle. He tried to identify it, and failed. He said with honesty, “It’s the kind of thing I’d go a thousand miles out of my way to make happen.”

  She gave him a speculative, weighing-up look, absolutely different from their first meeting. But before she could speak again, a waiter materialised alongside their table.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said deferentially. “Bitchy asked if you could spare a minute.”

  Almost relieved, Laird excused himself.

  He was led through the door he had seen Bitchy leave by a short time earlier, down a corridor, and into a dressing-room where the star sat still in full array except for the night’s vast orange wig, parked on a formhead beside the lighted makeup mirror.

  “Sit down,” the husky intersexed voice invited.

  Laird complied, trying not to stare too pointedly at the spectacle before him.

  “You asked me last night about someone called Emmerich Tileman, right? Now it’s my turn to ask you something. What do you think he could be up to?” Bitchy sounded distinctly aggrieved.

  “I haven’t the least idea,” Laird said, puzzled. “That’s what I want to know. Haven’t you come up with anything?”

  Loading a cigarette into a long jade holder as though driving a knife into the wax doll of an enemy, Bitchy scowled. “I come up with something every day! Want to know who’s the father of the heir to the Ware-Moultrie estate? Want to know who registered at the London Hilton last night under the name of Harris? Want to know who drank the Italian air attaché under the table? I picked all those up today, and but for you that would have made it a good day. But you set me to walking through a wall.”

  “You mean somebody’s holding out on you?”

  “Christ, I’ve been in the scandalmonger’s trade long enough to know the difference between holding out and digging in the heels!” Bitchy snatched up a glass of champagne from the dressing-table and drained it at a gulp. “Listen, I’ll tell you what I did. I buzzed my contacts along Fleet Street and asked for any bells the name might ring. Nothing. So then I asked for a morgue check at each of the leading dailies, and one of my men called back to tell me that Emmerich Teilmann—spelt the German way—was the name of a refugee from the DDR who came over four years ago. But all the para in the morgue said about him was that he was a chemist. Does that do anything for you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought. Sammy stopped being interested in any kind of chemistry except the hormones when he sold his business and adopted the life of Riley. I said to my man that’s not enough, go dig around some more. He was miffed but I leaned on him—he owes me the two biggest beats of his career.

  “While I was waiting for him to come back I started on my own payroll.”

  “Payroll?”

  “Hell, not the ones I pay with money, I don’t mean! Those are small fry—hotel clerks, travel agents, part-time whores. No, the people who know what’s really worth knowing like to be paid in a different currency. You can get addicted to gossip like a drug, so I pay most of them with rumours they haven’t picked up themselves. And then, of course, I pay some of them with silence…”

  A pause.

  I was right. It could be very easy to hate Bitchy Legree! But Laird said nothing.

  “Never mind that, though! If I’d drawn an ordinary blank I’d have said this Tileman isn’t news and left it at that. Most people aren’t news. But three separate people recognised the name, I can swear to that, and they all closed up like oysters. And right before my show tonight this reporter I mentioned called me up and said, don’t touch it, Bitchy, it’s too big. God damn! Nothing’s too big for me up to and including the Royals! I’ve had a palace official come sit in that chair and threaten to have me busted for buggery if I didn’t take a particular item out of my act, and I said he’d look a bloody fool if the medical evidence at the trial showed that I was a woman after all, and the next night I put in a sketch about that, doing all the voices—the judge, and a queer Guardsman, the whole shtick… Ah, skip it. I don’t have much time before my
next call. But maybe now you see why I want to know what you think Tileman’s up to.”

  Laird frowned. “Skelton—Sammy’s business partner—said something about the entertainment industry,” he ventured.

  “Oh, that! I didn’t mention it because I thought you’d have turned it up yourself.” Bitchy knocked ash into a dish that matched the cigarette-holder. “Yes, he’s the chairman and managing director of a firm that makes stage scenery and special effects props for movies.”

  “Is that genuine?”

  “Completely. Except that he doesn’t actually run the business—he leaves it to a chum of mine called Alistair Bodiam whom I knew when he was a broke and hungry young artist. He’s a fat cat now, though, and I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Have you asked him about Tileman?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course not. But I’ll get someone to get someone to ask him!”

  “What’s the company called?”

  “Dramagic Limited. Disgusting, isn’t it?” A fleeting return to the usual Bitchy campness with a contemptuous flutter of monstrous fake eyelashes.

  “It certainly doesn’t sound like anything Sammy could have objected to,” Laird muttered. Bitchy reacted sharply.

  “Oh, I see what you’re thinking! Tileman conned Barsamby Loans into putting up the finance for something Sammy didn’t approve of when he learned the details?”

  “More or less,” Laird nodded. “But it can’t have been the scenery firm. Hmm! Maybe Tileman kept up his chemistry on the side.”

  “It’s a possibility. But making what?”

  “Something profitable, that’s definite.”

  “Agreed. Tileman owns a Chelsea penthouse, Tileman runs a Bentley, Tileman uses one of the best tailors in London—not bad going for an East German refugee after only four years.”

  “So what could it be—drugs?”

  “You’re joking. There isn’t enough profit in drugs in this town. The Health Service supports the grey market in H and the blues, and if you want to know in which university labs they’re cooking the acid these days I can tell you that too. No, it’s pin-money stuff.”