Cruel as the Grave

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Never,’ she said. ‘That wouldn’t be appropriate. I don’t even know where he lived.’

  ‘Tell me about your sister’s relationship with him.’

  ‘For that, you’ll have to ask Gilda,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t tell you what there was between them. Erik didn’t talk about her. He was always very discrete about his clients. He’d have to be, or he soon wouldn’t have any.’

  ‘So how did you know she was sleeping with him?’

  ‘She told me herself. Big heart-to-heart one day and it all came out.’

  ‘And did she know that you—?’

  ‘No, I never told her I was.’ She made a moue. ‘Baby sister, you see – I got in the habit of looking out for her. So I didn’t say anything, in case it upset her. Just resolved it wouldn’t happen again. And it didn’t. And I never told Erik I knew about him and her, either.’

  So many secrets, Swilley thought. Outside, she rang Slider. ‘Are you still in the office, boss?’

  ‘I haven’t moved from my desk yet.’

  ‘So you haven’t spoken to Gilda Steenkamp yet?’

  ‘No – why?’

  ‘I think you want to hear what Myrna Abrams told me before you do. I’m on my way back now.’

  LaSalle found Jack Gallo easily – he was doing the late shift at Pex. The place was pulsing with sweating, grunting, bulging customers who made LaSalle feel like an underendowed beanstalk. If anyone asks, he thought, I’m telling them I’m a karate black belt and can kill a man with my thumbs. He tried to narrow his eyes in a dangerous manner, but as it meant he couldn’t see where he was going it was more dangerous to him than potential attackers.

  Nobody asked him, anyway. Gallo fielded him with a resigned air and led him to the office. ‘Have you got anywhere yet?’ he asked, offering a chair. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything more I can tell you. I mean, I’d like to help, but …’ He let it hang, and sat down on the edge of the desk in a weary manner, pushing paperwork back with his buttocks to make room. He looked, LaSalle thought, a bit frayed round the edges, which on the whole he took as a useful sign.

  ‘We’re interested, you see,’ LaSalle said, not sitting – he didn’t want to be looked down on by Gallo – ‘that you don’t have an alibi for Tuesday night.’

  Gallo looked exasperated. ‘Well, I don’t see what I can do about that. Anyway, there must be hundreds of people in London who don’t have alibis. Why pick on me?’

  ‘They didn’t all know Lingoss. And you lied to us.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Tuesday night? I told the other detective I finished work, went for a drink, and went home. It’s all true.’

  ‘Maybe. But we checked up at The Britannia – oh yes, we check everything, mate, you should know that – and it seems you had a meeting with Dez Wilson there that night, which you didn’t tell us about.’

  Gallo coloured slightly, which could have been annoyance or guilt or both. He didn’t actually say anything.

  ‘Well?’ LaSalle prompted. ‘You met good old Dez in The Britannia – are you going to lie again?’

  ‘I didn’t lie,’ Gallo said tautly. ‘I didn’t mention Dez, that’s all. It’s different.’

  ‘Are you trying to pretend you forgot all about this important meeting?’

  ‘You keep calling it a meeting,’ Gallo said irritably. ‘I didn’t know he was going to come in. I wasn’t expecting him. It wasn’t arranged. I don’t know why you’re getting so fixated about it.’

  ‘People usually have a very good reason for lying to the police. Or a very bad reason, I should say.’

  ‘I didn’t lie!’

  ‘We’re thinking, you see, that here are two big hefty lads with a grudge against Erik Lingoss, they meet on the evening he’s killed, they don’t have alibis, and they pretend the meeting never happened. So what was it all about? Working out the last details? Who was going to do what. Who was going to hold him down and who was going to whack him.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Gallo surged to his feet, but he only stamped to the window and back. ‘I didn’t kill him! We were mates. I’d never kill anyone. It’s crazy!’

  ‘So why didn’t you mention meeting Dez?’

  A slight hesitation. ‘I didn’t …’ Long pause. ‘I didn’t want to get him into trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? Like being suspected of killing Erik Lingoss?’

  Gallo spread his hands. ‘Look, Dez was in a bit of trouble when he was a kid. I’m sure you know that by now – you’ll have looked up his record. But he turned it round. The fitness training, the discipline, people believing in him – it showed him there was a better way, stopped him going to the bad. He’s made a success of his life since then. He’s done bloody wonders, if you want to know. He’s a top bloke. But there’s that record he can never shake off. And he’s black. You people will always have a down on him. I wanted to protect him. So I just … didn’t mention him. It was a spur of the moment thing. OK, it was stupid, but it didn’t mean anything. Dez would no more hurt Erik than I would.’

  ‘Why did you meet, then?’

  ‘It wasn’t arranged. Dez knew where I’d be, he came in to have a chat, that’s all.’

  ‘A very intense chat, according to the bar staff. Lowered voices and heads together.’

  ‘Look, he’d had a barney with his wife, and he’d just come home and found she’d left him and taken Ayesha with her. Dez worships that kiddie. He was in a state, he didn’t know what to do. That’s what he came to talk about – not Erik.’

  LaSalle shook his head. ‘I can’t see why you wouldn’t tell us that. There’s nothing about that to put him in the frame. Unless that’s not all it was.’ He waited to let Gallo speak, but he didn’t. ‘The barney with his wife, for instance – what was it about?’ Gallo didn’t answer, but LaSalle thought there was consciousness in the silence. ‘It was about your sister, wasn’t it? Mel was fed up with Dez being so concerned about Lucy, talking about her all the time. Yakking about how Erik done her wrong.’

  Gallo looked up. ‘If I’d said that, you’d have got the wrong idea. You’d have latched onto it – I know what you blokes are like.’

  ‘You and Dez both, you both hated Erik for what he’d done to Lucy.’

  ‘I didn’t hate him. He was just – Erik. He was like that. You had to accept it. And Lucy had got over it.’

  ‘But Dez hadn’t.’

  ‘It was all just talk. Dez would never hurt a fly.’

  ‘Except that you think maybe he would.’

  ‘Never!’

  There was nothing more to be gained from the interview, without direct evidence. If only they had enough to search Gallo’s pad and find the mobile. LaSalle nodded and stood up. ‘We’ll leave it for now,’ he said. ‘By the way, how did you find out that Erik was sleeping with someone else as well as your sister? Did he tell you?’

  ‘Erik? No. He didn’t talk about his clients – not by name. You’ve got to be discreet in this business. And I didn’t “find out”, as you put it. He told Lucy he couldn’t see her any more because he was seeing someone else. And with Erik “seeing” meant “sleeping with”.’

  LaSalle pondered that a moment. ‘From what you’ve said before, Erik didn’t usually mind sleeping with more than one woman at a time. Wasn’t it rather remarkable that he broke off with Lucy just for that reason?’

  Gallo had to think about that. ‘I suppose …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I suppose he was … being more respectful of Lucy, really, by breaking it off. I hadn’t thought of it like that before.’ He seemed disturbed by the idea.

  ‘Unless he had another reason. Unless he’d just got bored with Lucy. Maybe she didn’t have much to keep him interested.’

  Gallo’s fists bunched. ‘Don’t you talk about my sister like that.’

  ‘Take it easy, chap. I’m not a punch bag.’

  ‘You’re a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Porson, staring out of the
main office window at the traffic struggling along Uxbridge Road, both directions chokka, half the world trying to get home from work, the other half trying to go out for the evening. Slider reflected that there was no need for Porson to be there at that time of the day, or indeed at all on a Saturday, but since his dear wife died, he had nothing to go home for. The Job was all he had. Slider felt a surge of gratitude for Joanna and George, Dad and his wife Lydia. Family! He’d be in the going-home stream, no question. He’d never want to go out in the evening. And he had a moment of unwelcome pity for Lingoss, who’d had nothing and no one. The self-made man.

  Porson turned. ‘Gallo and Wilson is still the best bet. One or the other, or both acting in collision. Both’d be better. That would account for the two separate attacks. One clobbers him, the other goes back and finishes him off.’

  ‘Sir, I can’t help feeling that if they did it they’d have arranged an alibi,’ said Swilley.

  Porson snorted. ‘We’re not talking Brain of Britain here. Thinking things through is not your average criminal’s fortress.’

  ‘And the motive, sir – Lingoss and Lucy Gallo had broken up a month ago. Wouldn’t they have done it while it was fresh, if that was the reason?’

  ‘They could have had other motives as well,’ Lœssop said.

  ‘And Gallo admitted that Wilson was still sore about it,’ said LaSalle.

  ‘If they were in it together, they could have been each other’s alibi,’ said Hart. ‘Said they were together at Gallo’s flat, for instance. Why didn’t they? Hard to disprove something like that.’

  Slider wasn’t sure if she was for the idea or against it. Apparently, neither was Porson, because he glared at her and said, ‘They both lied, Wilson about his wife and Gallo about the meeting. There’s no smoke without straw.’ He looked at Slider. ‘You’ve got nothing else, have you?’

  ‘We haven’t interviewed Gilda Steenkamp yet. She was apparently the last person to see him alive.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you’d better get on and talk to her, but unless she was there when the killer or killers arrived … Nothing on any cameras? No witnesses come forward? Somebody must have seen them.’

  ‘Nothing yet, sir,’ Slider answered.

  Porson shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Well, you’ve got to pull all the stops out of the bag before Monday, because with this march coming up, I can see Lingoss being put on the back boiler, and there’s nothing I like worse than a case hanging around like a bad smell. For Gawd’s sake get something so we can search their gaffs at least.’

  He stalked out, and Slider turned to McLaren. ‘I know you’d have told me if you’d got anything, but I have to ask. Bus cameras?’

  ‘It’s a long time frame, guv,’ McLaren said. ‘Now we’ve got the nine thirty appointment I’ve had to widen it. And there’s a lot of buses. I’ve got a few cars turning into Russell Close, but most of them you can’t read the index, or its partial. I’m making a list, but it takes time to work through.’

  ‘I know,’ Slider said. ‘And the electronics shop?’

  McLaren shook his head. ‘They’ve not turned up yet.’

  ‘All right. Keep trying. I’d better get on and interview the famous Gilda Steenkamp, since we’ve nowhere else to go.’

  ‘And by a huge stroke of luck, I’m free to go with you,’ said Atherton. ‘You need my niche expertise. You know I’m the only person in the firm who ever reads a book.’

  ‘Take him, boss,’ said Swilley. ‘Then we won’t have to listen to him using words like “niche”.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with niche,’ said Atherton. ‘Lovely sheashide town.’

  ‘Oh God, take him away!’ Swilley cried.

  It was one of those massive white-stuccoed Victorian Campden Hill mansions that had been divided into two dwellings without in any way diminishing its luxury. The word ‘flat’ was pitifully inadequate. The ground floor was taken up with a splendid entrance hall and staircase. Gilda Steenkamp had the first floor, and the second and third floors were a separate maisonette. The conversion had been done back in Edwardian times, so the grandeur had been retained. This was no developer’s cardboard-partition job. The door to her flat, for instance, was a nine-foot solid mahogany panelled beauty, glossily varnished and with brass door furniture that must have weighed pounds.

  It was opened by a tall man in his sixties with a large head of beautifully-tended silver hair and a tasteful tan that suggested regular foreign travel. He was wearing a beautiful tweed suit; there were heavy plain gold cufflinks in his shirt, and his shoes were buffed to a gloss. Slider maintained you could tell a lot about a man from the way he kept his shoes and his hands. A quick glance proved this man’s hands were perfectly manicured.

  ‘Mr Steenkamp?’ Slider enquired politely.

  The mouth tightened. ‘My wife writes under her maiden name,’ he said. ‘My name is Seagram.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Slider. ‘I suppose that must happen a lot. It must be annoying for you.’

  ‘The husbands of writers have to get used to it,’ he said, without exactly saying it was all right.

  He examined their warrant cards seriously and let them into the hall, which was beautiful, with a high ceiling, magnificent mouldings, a chandelier of Victorian authenticity, gleaming wood floor with a Turkish runner down the centre, and a Regency console by way of hall table with a vast gilded mirror on the wall above it, the frame finished at the top with a fat golden cupid tangled in ribbons and flowers. Even the lady’s handbag on the console had the Chanel double C on it, which Slider knew meant it had cost thousands.

  ‘I can’t think why you want to bother my wife about this business,’ said Seagram. ‘But I suppose you have to do your duty. She’s on the telephone at the moment, speaking to her agent in New York, but she’ll talk to you when she’s finished.’

  He led them into a drawing room so full of exquisite antiques Slider didn’t know where to look first, from the furniture to the porcelain to the paintings on the walls. It was a huge room, about thirty feet long, panelled up to the dado, and everything was elegantly arranged and perfectly polished. It looked like something from a National Trust property.

  ‘You have some beautiful things,’ he couldn’t help saying.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Seagram minimally, as if he’d agreed a long time ago in a weak moment to say something and now felt he had to honour his commitment.

  Atherton looked at Slider as the same thing clicked in his mind at the same moment. ‘Excuse me,’ Atherton said, ‘but are you the Seagram of Heneage and Seagram? The antique dealers?’

  ‘Yes,’ Seagram said, like a horse whisking away a fly. ‘I’ll go and see if my wife is ready for you.’

  He went out of the room, and Atherton said, ‘Well that’s interesting.’

  ‘If you can’t have nice antiques when you’re an antique dealer, when can you?’ said Slider.

  ‘I meant, it’s interesting that there’s a link here. Lucy Gallo works for him.’

  ‘Yes, I know that’s what you meant. But I can’t think what the significance of it is, so I thought I’d ignore it for now.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Atherton. Then: ‘I’m going to meet Gilda Steenkamp. Oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-boy!’

  ‘Settle down,’ said Slider. ‘Celebrities are never as exciting as you think they’re going to be.’

  TWELVE

  Pie in the Sky with Diamonds

  Seagram led them to ‘my wife’s study’ which was at the back of the house, with a tall, gracious window – presumably looking over gardens, because Slider could see trees waving beyond. The room was large and warm and nest-like, deep with books and glowing dark wood, a worn red Turkish carpet on the floor, a faint smell of freesias from a bunch in a vase by the window. Flown in from the Channel Islands – expensive tastes! By the fireplace there was a big leather Chesterfield stuffed with cushions with a lamp invitingly placed for reading, and an enormous partner’s desk with papers, books and a PC screen and keyboard
on it.

  And there was Gilda Steenkamp, standing in the middle of the room to receive them, like someone patiently waiting to do their duty, like the Queen about to present a long list of OBEs. She was tall and slim and wearing a garnet-red jersey wrap-around dress that outlined an athletic figure. Her dark hair was short and expensively cut, her face was strong-featured and handsome with a full-lipped mouth, and large dark eyes, with heavy lids like curved gardenia petals. But the eyes were blue-ringed, the mouth drooped at the corners; she looked drawn and pale. Some trouble, Slider thought, had come to her recently. She looked as though she’d been doing a lot of crying.

  ‘Here are the police, dear,’ Seagram said in gentle tones as if talking to an invalid.

  She gave him, Slider thought, a scathing look.

  Slider took over the introductions, and offered their warrant cards, which she waved away regally. There was a slightly awkward pause, which Steenkamp broke.

  ‘Thank you, Brian,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said, and withdrew, closing the heavy door behind him. It made no sound as it closed, but it seemed to seal them in a velvety hush.

  ‘You want to talk to me about Erik Lingoss,’ she said. She took the armchair (French, late-eighteenth century) and waved them to the Chesterfield opposite. Her hands looked strong – a combination of typing and fitness training, Slider supposed – and perfectly manicured, with moderate-length nails lacquered dark red, and several rings whose large diamonds had the sparkle of authenticity. She was also wearing diamond stud earrings. This was, after all, he reminded himself, a very wealthy woman.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything useful I can tell you.’ She sat like the Queen, too – back straight, knees together, feet crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. Deportment lessons at school perhaps, Slider thought.

  ‘You never know what might be useful,’ he said. ‘And it seems that you must have been the last person to see him alive.’

  She flinched slightly at the words, but she said, ‘I don’t know why you think that.’

  ‘You had an appointment with him at nine thirty on Tuesday evening.’