by John Elliott
The reply to her application arrived six days later in the self-addressed envelope she had thoughtfully enclosed. Norma Bones, the head of the Bones Detective Agency, would be glad to interview her on the following Friday. Counting out the intervening days with ever more lengthy walks and late night TV shows, Geraldine finally presented herself shortly before the appointed hour outside No 27, Cascade Rd, West Hampstead.
In the quiet residential area the semi-detached house was no different from its neighbours. Norma Bones, who opened the front door in answer to her pressing the bell, however, was quite another matter. Obviously elderly, clad in a greenish jacket and skirt of country tweeds and shod in polished brown brogues, her character harked back to vague memories of old black and white post-Second World War British movies Geraldine had seen on television. A largish, surprisingly firm hand briefly shook hers. The unwanted image of a midwife smacking a baby on the rump and declaring it to have a pair of testicles floated in Geraldine’s mind, and the testicular connection only strengthened when Norma ushered her inside in a light baritone voice. Whatever else happened this was already turning out to be quite an adventure.
‘We’re in the library,’ she? he? said.
The library was a capacious room befitting its title by the serried rows of books stacked in the shelves of four bookcases. There was no one else there. Perhaps the ‘we’re’ indicated a preference for the royal we. ‘The writer did it,’ screeched a raucous voice. Geraldine swivelled round and saw a vivid lime-green parrot detach itself from the far side of one of the bookcases.
‘Bird of limited learning,’ said Norma motioning Geraldine to the chair in front of the desk. ‘Lacenaire, do for once try to be original.’
‘Pierre François: thief, fence, would-be writer and scourge of society, murderer.’
‘Bravo. Twice bravo.’ Norma clapped in delight. ‘I can see we will get along famously. It gladdens an old woman’s heart to see one so young garlanded with history. I’ve tried and tried to get him to quote his literary counterpart in Raymond Queneau’s Zazie Dans Le Metro “You talk, you talk. It’s all you do,” to no avail.’
‘What’s up, chucky? Tiger got your penknife?’ retorted the bird, evidently put out at the slur on his ability to mimic successfully.
‘My dear, I hope you’ll forgive an elderly woman using the term but, alas, I am no longer a threat to either gender sexually so please indulge me. I already find you positively suited to our task, our labour of love, and that task and labour is, of course, detection. Our agency was founded by myself and my elder sister, Henrietta, now deceased.’
While Geraldine wondered if Henrietta might have been like Norma more of a Henry, Norma seemed to read her thoughts for she/he continued, ‘Don’t explain. A useful watchword I find. Thankfully the dead rest where no explanation is required. Books, as you can see, my dear, are our tools. They assist our methodology. Crime invariably mimics fiction. Find the appropriate genre, dissect the motives and machinations and the perpetrator stands unmasked. Read and ye shall find.’
‘Mine’s a large Krepkaya and cranberry juice.’ Lacenaire swooped down onto the desk and folded his wings. He regarded Geraldine attentively. ‘What’s up chucky? Tiger got your wedding cake?’
‘Co-opted by a parrot. Your appointment is unanimous on this side of the house.’
‘But you know nothing about me. My suitability. My...’
Norma smiled. ‘In money terms remuneration is a pittance, but you can live here for less than a peppercorn rent. There’s accommodation upstairs. Nowadays I live elsewhere in Dollis Hill. Lacenaire will stay however. This library has become his home. His cage is over yonder behind the drape. We both suggest you start as soon as possible.’
And start she did the following day. Curwell and Janley as well as her cramped former accommodation turned out to be but a brief episode.
3. After a Lady Client Has Called
As her client — for she now thought of Joan Oliphant as her client as opposed to a Bones Agency client — had declined to provide either a home or a business address. Geraldine had considered the possibility of following her but had decided it would be too risky, or indeed futile, because she had failed to check by what means of transport her possible quarry had arrived. She now consulted the pile of London telephone directories. Luckily Oliphant was not a common surname. The list of J Oliphants was sparse and manageable. Over the next three hours she rang each in turn to no avail. Either Joan Oliphant only possessed a mobile, lived outside Greater London or her number was ex-directory.
‘Damn,’ she said out loud. The truth was she hadn’t prepared properly. Even she knew the first rule in the sleuthing business was to find out and understand your client’s motives. How many books in the genre hinged on the seemingly innocent or hard done by client proving to be an arch manipulator or, worse still, the actual perpetrator of the crime? Her initial feeling of euphoria was rapidly disintegrating into worry and gloom. Why had Norma shown such blind faith in her ability? She had no experience. She was only flying haphazardly by the seat of her pants. In fact her performance so far was pants. ‘I’ll tell you what’s up, chucky,’ she said standing beside the parrot’s cage. ‘Tiger’s got my knickers in a twist.’
‘The writer did it,’ retorted Lacenaire, jerking his head from side to side.
‘Oh get a grip! How many times have we been told the writer is dead? The text and the reader are more important.’
Lacenaire fluttered his wings in response and dipped his beak sagely against his plumage but disdained a reply.
‘Etiquette,’ said Geraldine more to herself than to him as she handled the floppy disk Joan Oliphant had left. ‘I must follow etiquette and do more than one thing at a time.’ The dead man, Augustin Cox, was as important as the reticent client. Knowing neither her laptop nor Norma’s PC had a floppy disc drive she needed to find one at the library or hopefully at the internet cafe, which was nearer. Etiquette — a codified system of civilised manners and decorum, according to the dictionary definition. Unlike her own raggle-taggle gypsy approach Joan Oliphant had played it in spades. Perhaps she doth protest too much, thought Geraldine. There was something about the way she had said, ‘mostly gentlemen.’ But enough speculation. There were things to do. It was time to be on the move. She felt cheered up. Norma was too astute a cross-dresser to be totally wrong about her new recruit’s suitability.
Outside it was raining gently. Its faint spit felt warm against her face. ‘A fine soft day,’ as they said in Ireland. Here around her the good citizens of West Hampstead went about their allotted comings and goings, hurrying slightly more than usual because of the wet. Their faces, normally impassive to the passer-by, became animated once they answered the ring tones of their mobile phones. Their voices filled the air in separate bubbles chatting intimately in the street to unseen callers. Private thoughts made public, while other people unspoken to surrounded them.
Mine doesn’t ring, thought Geraldine, and although I’ve no need to tell someone else exactly where I am at this moment there’s a part of me wishes it would ring. Here I am age twenty three with no real friends, let alone lovers, even the ones, inadequate as they were, I left in Dublin, talking to a parrot and now involved with a woman, who’s a relic of some mad dress code and absorbed with manners. Gloves. She actually wore gloves. But then to be fair Geraldine had never imagined that life, and her life in particular, would be straightforward even in a circuitous way, as James Joyce had put it with his beginning and ending of ‘riverrun’.
The internet café did have a machine with a floppy disc drive. Yes, she could also use a printer. She ordered a cappuccino, tasted it and wished she hadn’t. The file on the screen wasn’t many kilobytes when she inserted the floppy. She double clicked and opened it. Her client might be perfectly nuanced in civilised behaviour, but she was ramshackle in both sentence structure and the logical progression of relevant information. From a first reading it was difficult to marshal events in any kind of c
hronological sequence. Meetings and conversations with Augustin Cox were mixed up with recollections of other people and events which appeared to bear no connection to the deceased. Geraldine dutifully noted down each reference to him in the loose-leaf pad she always carried in her bag putting a question mark where necessary against her entries of date, place and who else present. The rough gist seemed to be that Joan Oliphant had met Augustin first when he was still a child. His exact age and where they had met were not specified. At the time, among other occupations mentioned but again not specified, she had acted as chaperone for a number of stage-school kids — again it was not clear if Augustin was definitely one of them. Her duties had mostly been to accompany them to TV studios or film locations where they appeared usually in commercials.
Apart from general remarks about the questionable morality of using children to promote washing up liquids, breakfast cereals, confectionery etc, she stated that Augustin had exhibited a naturalness which had fixed him immediately in her mind. ‘I felt he did what they asked him to do as if he had already decided it was exactly what he, himself, wanted to do,’ she wrote. Unlike the others, who talked incessantly about those ahead of them in the profession, those who had already done famous things, or what mummy and daddy had said about so and so, he never mentioned his parents or for that matter anyone else. He took her hand quite naturally. She then automatically took his when accompanying him on future journeys.
Geraldine stopped reading and wrote then underlined ‘Family Background? Home? Only Child? Parents Alive?’ She was steadily building up a crescendo of question marks, page after page.
Then there had been a gap, not specified, until they met again. Augustin now was in late adolescence. He confided in her. WHAT? Geraldine’s papermate capitalised. Later references became ever more fragmentary and enigmatic. ‘Unhappy. Good boy at heart. I told him you’ll come through this. Good news. A lovely present and a genuine surprise. So thoughtful to remember. I only wish there was something I could do to help.’ The last of it petered out without real conclusion. Geraldine ejected the floppy, gathered the hardcopy and returned them along with her notes to her bag.
Back home in the library she set to work collating the information she had onto a flip chart under the two headings of Augustin Cox and Joan Oliphant. She looked up Bedfont and Feltham in the AZ then fed them into Google on her laptop. The Young Offenders Institution and Remand Centre was the most noteworthy detail about Feltham, and as for Bedfont, apart from its history as an ancient village, its only claim to fame was its proximity to Terminal Four Heathrow. She turned the flip chart pages over and wrote a new heading, ‘Murder Scene’ and put DI Jerzy Turostowski underneath, then stood back
Would the client contact the police or vice versa if and when they established a link? Why had the client picked the Bones Agency? Had she really been at school with Christabel? There were many more questions surrounding her than answers. Augustin Cox at the moment was an even more shadowy character. Rather than start from the flat in Bedfont and work backwards, she thought, I’ll start with his life and work forwards until he, poor sod, reaches his extinction. She needed to check possible stage schools, entries in Spotlight, find those who had known him, loved him or hated him, until she discovered someone who, by accident or design, had finally killed him. These were the unknowns waiting excitingly to be fathomed. One thing though was for sure. Joan Oliphant was not divulging all she knew. She already fitted the classic profile of the unreliable client. If Norma was right the answers lay in the books somewhere. ‘The writer may well have done it,’ she said softly to Lacenaire.
‘Mine’s a large Krepkaya and carroway seed,’ he replied, more through habit than in anticipation.
Chapter 4
Self Expression
As far as he was aware Hamish had spent a dreamless night — that is to say if he did dream he did not recall on waking up having done so. Unlike the late flat-proud Augustin Cox, his now extending state of living on his own did not foster tidy housekeeping. He strewed no matter what liberally and regularly enough to make the Bert Hills of this world tetchy in the extreme if not positively incandescent. Items, especially small ones, once successfully strewn seemed to enter a temporary, or indeed sometimes permanent, black hole from which they could only be extracted by completely forgetting that they needed to be found.
Thus on opening his eyes he knew exactly where he was — in bed in his one bed-roomed flat in Radley Road, Whitton. He also knew who he was — Hamish Ogden, born Corby Northamptonshire nineteen seventy-seven, but he did not know where he had deposited his car keys, his warrant card or for that matter the three new pairs of socks he had bought in Tesco’s the previous evening. Hopefully time and a good rummage would solve the mystery of their location.
He swung his legs out from under the duvet and headed for the shower. First things first as the Assistant Commissioner always said to the Mother Superior. The directed spray of hot, then twiddlingly reduced to warm, water hit between his shoulder blades, slid down his spine and splashed off his legs to the floor. He turned round and faced the jet. Perhaps on reflection it should have been as the Mother Superior always said to the Assistant Commissioner. Either way it was the way Pat told them.
Stimulation combined with relaxation inspired thought. He reached for the soap and began applying it to his chest and arms. The true mystery, he reflected, didn’t lie in death. No. The true mystery lay in life. The corpse of yesterday like himself had been alive. Even though extensively decomposed it might still yield specific answers, but rather than anything the forensics revealed it would be its previous life, once unravelled and understood, which would solve the case.
The killer, too, was presumably still in the land of the living. Somewhere somehow their life and the life of the deceased had been contingent enough for hate to escalate for, from what he had already seen, the murder had not been a random attack nor a break-in which had gone tragically wrong. This attack had been personal. Perhaps at the moment Delman was the prime suspect. The burning papers he had pushed through Cox’s letterbox a beginning. The blow to the back of the head a conclusion. This afternoon’s scheduled interview with him might wrap the whole thing up.
Shower over, he towelled and dressed, the new socks still in the land of wherever. A re-heated cup of coffee from the brew he had made yesterday and two partly browned slices of toast, one buttered and honeyed the other simply buttered, constituted breakfast. How long had it been since he last had sex? Too long. Only three times since in the five months after his split up with Eunice and then the two and a half since coming to Feltham from Thornton Heath. Work, of course, was a verboten patch, and he had not felt fully at ease in the area’s few possible clubs. Dating nowadays was like business networking. Each party assessed the mental tick list of self-esteem, compatibility, prospects and commitment. If he wasn’t careful he was in danger of turning into an old fashioned romantic, hoping for the one chance encounter which would lead — Eros and Janet Street Porter allowing — to some kind of permanent domestic bliss rather than the intermittent intimacy which he and Eunice had shared. Domestic bliss. Well no young woman would find that if she looked around her here.
Where the hell were his warrant card and his car keys? Whatever else had to be done he must tidy up and make that the priority for tonight, come what may and no messing. He grinned at his own ironic choice of phrase. Evaporating time before his needed departure now made the hunt serious. He tried to visualise his exact movements from his arrival the previous night to when he had finally crashed out. Neither of the sought after items were anywhere on the table top. He went into the bathroom and drew a blank on the window ledge. A further blank on the shelves in the cabinet followed. Nothing lay under the two clean towels he had put out yesterday morning.
Back in the bedroom he started quickly feeling in the pockets of his jackets. Anything was possible when he was in auto-pilot state. Still nothing. He moved to the kitchenette. Some crumb of remembrance struggled
up from partial amnesia. He had cut some slices from the loaf he had bought before transferring it to the bread bin. Bingo! His warrant card nestled on the top. One down and one to go.
He felt down the sides of the armchair and repeated the exercise on the back of the sofa cushions. A haul of a twenty pence piece, a button he didn’t recognise and a handful of dust were retrieved but no car keys. If he were suddenly bludgeoned to death those searching the murder scene would have a field day. He rifled through the pages of the local paper which occupied the furthermost cushion. Not in between. Not under. A notice of a lecture on the Cynics caught and held his eye. It was tonight 8.30 at Wandsworth Town Hall. The origins of cynicism appealed to him. But no he was fully committed to tidying up this mess without unnecessary diversions. He dropped the paper, turned round, and there were his car keys right in his line of vision sitting on top of the television. If only he had switched on and watched the early news all of this wasted palaver would have been avoided. Checking he had his house keys securely in his trouser pocket he finally relaxed, closed the front door and drove to work.
When Hamish eventually entered the Ops room, DI Jerzy Turostowski, a chubby iron grey-haired man of fifty-three years had returned to the Feltham fold and as always was affably in charge. His outward air of affability hid only a deeper layer of affability inside. Somehow by some miracle his years in the job had not soured his natural beneficent temperament. Neither the villains he had met, nor the machinations he had endured within the force had dented his unfailing sense of bonhomie. Whilst his wife, Bettina, in contrast, did not think much of the human race, especially those whom fate had cast in her path, he considered nobody beyond redemption. His two grown-up sons, one a biochemist, the other a nutritionist, however, tended to adhere to their mother’s point of view. Undaunted by their endemic miserabilism, Jerzy presided over their frequent family gatherings with ample carvings of good humour and well chosen helpings of encouragement. His daughters-in-law found in him the jovial and understanding father they’d always wished they’d had. Himself the grandson of Polish immigrants, who had settled in Hammersmith where he and his wife still lived, he delighted now in hearing Polish spoken so frequently in the streets.