by John Elliott
‘When was this? You may or may not know that Augustin had several vices. Exaggeration and lying being two of them. We split up and that was that. The end, in hindsight, of a rather unsatisfactory romance.’
‘His end was more than rather unsatisfactory. To be murdered and the body left alone for weeks undiscovered. A horrible thing.’
‘Yes, horrible.’ Her tone softened. She had got herself back under control. ‘Bedfont. Well, that’s Bedfont for you. I went there once. Things could have been different. In the beginning he could have lived with me. Oh, I wasn’t under many illusions about him, but if that had been the case the worst might not have happened. Then he blew it. He went too far and tried to subvert this business of mine which I love.’
‘Subvert. That’s a strange word.’
‘Not really. He wanted to take the social side you see all round you and change it. He introduced a professional into the fold. She touted for customers in spite of my guarantee that would never happen. Disguise it how he tried he was smitten by her. Add it to a long list of previous disappointments, and it was time for the fat lady to sing.’
‘This person he brought. Their initials weren’t LR by any chance?’
‘Jocky, people can come here, especially for the first time, and keep their anonymity. Most here are regulars I’m glad to say. They don’t need to hide their identities. Now if you’ve only come along to dish the dirt on behalf of Augustin I must ask you . . .’
She didn’t manage to finish her warning or ultimatum because at that moment a flushed Celia re-entered, firmly took Hamish’s hand and interjected breathlessly, ‘Still here, Jockey. Good. There’s somewhere private now. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? The back bedroom, Milly, it’s vacant. We can have it can’t we?’
Milly smiled. Her body relaxed visibly. ‘Of course, Celia. A very good choice in which to play. Now don’t keep the lady waiting, Jocky. You both seem ideally suited.’
As Celia led him to the door Hamish tried again. ‘LR?’
‘Lucy Revell.’
The name was clear. Forename and surname distinctly heard in spite of the still resounding smacks centre stage. In the event the evening had not been a total disaster. All the way up the stairs in front of him Celia’s hips sashayed invitingly. Sometimes when in Rome even the most reluctant Etruscan might have to do what the Romans did.
Chapter 16
A Lady Client Withdraws
1. Death and Uploads
Two days previously the discovery of a young woman’s body on a driveway verge leading to a Lea Valley sewage works had only rated a minor inclusion on London TV News and two excited headlines in the adjoining local newspapers. Otherwise it and the murder inquiry launched by Enfield CID, which quickly followed, were not of high enough profile to spark or sustain mainstream media interest. It was not a teenage or gang related shooting, nor was any sign of a serial killer at work suspected by the police. The victim, Blythe Fuller, age twenty-four, had been hit over the head and asphyxiated but had not been sexually assaulted. News, however, does not solely belong to broadcasters and the press. It drips and percolates in freer, more informal ways. People talk. Others listen. People text. Others read. Like anyone else her body once had a particular life and that life inevitably had connections.
Now, if Jerzy had been at the murder scene, and, of course, he wasn’t — the Lea Valley being miles out of his jurisdiction — he would have probably said, after due sadness and respect for a young life brutally shortened, that a frog had once more jumped into a pond and the ripples would spread regardless. However, the actual officers called to investigate pursued a less philosophical approach. Their initial mood was relatively upbeat. After the alert from a Water Board official, who had seen the body while driving to work in the early morning, the area had been quickly sealed off and preserved from contamination. The Scene Of Crime team methodically gathered enough personal effects: keys, mobile phone, wallet, credit card, four twenty pound notes, assorted cheap jewellery and an anklet with the inscription, ‘Blythe’, to satisfactorily identify the victim. Robbery did not appear to be the motive. The deceased’s clothes and underwear were unsoiled. Death had occurred sometime during the preceding twelve hours, and the likelihood was it had taken place elsewhere as the vicinity bore no signs of a struggle. Scant effort had been paid to conceal the body. The whole of the verge on which it lay was clearly visible from the driveway, and during the day several workers were permanently on site.
With sufficient evidence in hand the murder squad quickly moved on to the Church Housing Association maisonette in Leytonstone where Blythe had co-habited with her boyfriend of two years, Liam Connor. Prime suspect Number One, he appeared genuinely in pieces from the shock of her death. His at first faltering alibi proved on further investigation to place him out of the frame as far as time and possibility were concerned. It was also clear the murder had not been committed at her home. Pursuit of past relationships garnered from mobile phone contacts — one, unknown to Liam, still spluttering in an on-off, haphazard and quickie consummation kind of way — also proved fruitless, as the man involved had been in Dubai for the past month. Similar enquires with her workmates at Eudora Fashions, Ponders End, failed to shed any significant light.
The main focus of the investigation then concentrated on Blythe’s laptop and the mass of information contained on its hard drive, for this was where, as Liam attested, much of her existence had been played out. She had not, thankfully, bothered with any sophisticated degree of encryption. Once, after some trial and error, Happy 16 — sixteen being the number of the maisonette — had been understood to be her almost universal password to the websites she accessed and frequented, a trove of information opened up. Although she didn’t blog she might as well have done, because day by day through chat rooms, topic threads, emails and webcam and camcorder uploads, she revealed her thoughts, her shifting interests, sudden passions and equally sudden disavowals of current celebs and what was in and out of fashion.
At the same time more personal items surfaced, and it was on these that the search concentrated, building up, item by item, her social network. An upload of an attempted soft porn scene with Liam was self explanatory, but others needed further digging, for example, an unidentified young blonde woman and another young woman, referred to as Miss Linda, singing ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Professor’, while Miss Linda bent over the arm of a sofa and was given a pretend spanking by her giggling companion. Relating to this, Blythe had posted the comment, ‘I’ve seen him properly chastised.’ Her last entry, entitled ‘Creepy Perv’, included a shot, partially obstructed by parked cars, of an elderly man dressed in green and perched on a shooting stick. Numerous clips concerned someone called Aug.
One in black and white, obviously converted from an old video tape, showing a teenager wearing a Stetson and swinging a rope as if it were a lasso. Its shaky camera work tilted sometimes towards the sky, losing him altogether, then swooped back to the lawn at his feet. Behind him there was a small garden shed. The given title was ‘Aug Relives His Milky Bar Days’; Another showed him, now older, cuddling a younger Blythe and smoking a joint. A second female’s unseen presence could only be identified by voice. Overall the sound quality was so poor virtually nothing of their conversation could be deciphered. Professional enhancement was urgently needed. Further clips had him at different London locations which in turn gave them their titles: ‘Aug at Haverstock Hill’, ‘Aug at Purley’, ‘Aug at Catford’, ‘Aug at Bedfont’. In these he posed somewhat self-consciously, always looking straight back at the lens. Other people, mostly unidentified, then appeared with him in a separate series. Once, however, Blythe had supplied a designation. Frenchie Madam was her name for a large brunette woman dressed in a flowing caftan, who in one of them wagged her finger playfully in Aug’s face.
Liam, when questioned, professed he didn’t know anything about them. He only knew the items in which he himself had appeared. This was Blythe’s world, and as he had regard
ed it as a waste of time she hadn’t discussed it with him. As far as the police were concerned his knowledge or lack of it remained a moot point.
Steadily, the methodical sifting of chat room contributions began to provide more answers. Aug was Augustin Cox. Frenchie Madam was someone with the first name of Mireille. The Creepy Perv was one Norman Bones, who Blythe said had claimed he was a private detective. Correlation with the police database quickly established that Augustin Cox, himself, had been murdered and that Norman Bones was a known felon who had been found guilty of manslaughter and had served a prison term The enquiry moved onwards. Feltham CID was quickly contacted.
2. Still Searching for the Right Book
Unaware of these increasingly parallel developments, Geraldine, back in the library at West Hampstead, thought wistfully of Whitton and Hamish as she picked up and briefly scanned one book after another from the third as yet unexplored bookcase.
In one respect the Whitton flat had been much as she had expected in its predominant maleness. It bore a degree of apparent recent decoration without displaying any personal touches or much thought of creating mood enhancement. It was tidy and clean — she granted it that — tending towards the minimal but not drastically so like the description of Augustin Cox’s. place. Just somewhere semi-comfortable for Hamish to be when off duty and nothing more.
After a passionate getting together on the sofa followed by an equally passionate grappling on the floor, they had gone to bed. Bed first here in West Hampstead then bed in Whitton and, looking forward, most certainly more bed to come.
She was leafing through something called The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, tracing her finger down random paragraphs, reading but not really taking in the meaning of the words. Bed. Why the place and not the acts? Sex. Sex here. Sex in Whitton. Sex indoors. Sex in vehicles. Sex outdoors. The last two not yet with Hamish. Perhaps never with Hamish. There was something staid about him, although when passion fired and opportunity arose there might be what? She tried to picture it. A glade, a hillside, a nook and cranny where the leaves, the bumpy down-land grass, the trodden earth would be a bed.
When they had finally disentangled their limbs back in Whitton they had lain together at peace. Intimate for a time which now still brought satisfaction. Not speaking. The world, unlike the cliché, turning with them in it. Then she had asked when they would meet again. An innocent enough question. A legitimate question, but one he seemed to find burdensome. Clearly something was niggling him. Something she felt he was withholding. ‘I’m not sure,’ he had finally said. ‘There’s stuff on that Jerzy wants me to do. I might be tied up for a bit.’
Of course, they had joked about the tied up bit, and after not so long sex had intervened once more. This time though, in a way she had become aware of, he had wanted to assert his manhood, and she — well let’s be truthful — had faked what before had been real. Diogenes and Augustin had brought them together. Now something connected with Augustin could threaten to break them apart. Diogenes needed no-one, but he was a philosopher. She, Cynic and Hellenophile though she might be, did not want to forego the prospect, however messy, of love continued, so she told him about Halcyon Features.
Replacing The Jungle — social realism of the American Depression was after all an unlikely exemplar — she looked across to Lacenaire’s cage. The bird continued to maintain a decidedly unsettling silence. It pecked, nibbled and drank as before, tilting its head inquisitively and hopping from one talon to the other, but its wish to replicate human speech had temporarily gone. The occasional squawk was its sole concession. A visit to the vet’s might have to be the answer if the situation persisted for much longer. ‘Come on then, chucky,’ she said. ‘Something must be up. Tiger’s still lurking out there.’ Nada. Not even a wing flutter. The eyes were on her but the beak was motionless.
A bit like Norma post decline, Geraldine thought. She, too, this morning, had seemed distant when they had spoken on the telephone. Granted she had listened intently to the report of the Bracknell trip and the condensed description of the Halcyon set up, but her reaction to the Joan Oliphant and the LR revelations had been off-puttingly muted. ‘Leave Lucy Revell to me for a bit,’ she had said. ‘Let’s keep it to ourselves. As far as Joan goes, I’ve every confidence in you handling her when next she phones.’ And that, in essence, had been that, with Geraldine failing to mention she had already passed on Lucy’s name to Hamish. Further attempted suggestions had been politely blocked.
‘Is there a book, I wonder, that among other things combines murder with spanking?’ she asked rhetorically to the non-communicating Lacenaire as if he might possess an encyclopaedic knowledge that went beyond tigers, vodkas and cabbages and kings. Alice in Wonderland had seemed apposite to her in Bracknell with its images of White Rabbits and Caterpillars, but it didn’t really help to solve who had murdered the late Mr Cox. ‘Maybe I’d better stick to the sainted Agatha,’ she said again out loud. ‘Bedfont isn’t her territory, but plot certainly is. She rings all the variations from ABC sequence killings to the narrator did it, or to they all did it, and somewhere I think there’s even a corpse that proves to be a fake.’
Turning away from the increasingly sorrowful-looking bird she went to the line of Christie green Penguins, while mentally preparing herself for the tricky task of confronting Joan Oliphant with her murky past when she phoned later that evening. Behind her back the parrot gnawed at his perch. Gifted as he was, and although surrounded by books, he had never read one nor had the significance of their contents ever penetrated his consciousness.
Afternoon drifted into evening. Little the wiser, Geraldine, aware of being apart from Hamish, read without reaching any new conclusion. Was detecting by books, she wondered not for the first time, merely Norma’s private joke? Alison Petrie had quoted chapter and verse of previous cases, but then she was Norma’s confidante and no doubt saw the new recruit as gullible. Miss Marple. Hercule Poirot. Tommy and Tuppence. St Mary Meade. Little grey cells. Bright young things. All of it seemed a blind alley. They might as well be Gervaise Fenn, Albert Campion, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Nothing but fictional crime — and escapist stuff at that — while moment by moment the hour approached when she would have to tell the client, ‘Oh, by the way, I was watching a DVD where you beat a young woman across her bottom and the whole thing was filmed by Augustin.’ Or not, as the case might be, for the alternative was to be judiciously sparing with the actuality and play it by ear.
As it happened, these ponderings turned out to be completely de trop because at the appointed time the phone rang as expected, and Joan Oliphant, brisk and businesslike as usual, immediately terminated the contract and stated the amount, closed to negotiation, she was sending in settlement. The line went dead. Geraldine had failed to get a word in edgeways.
Chapter 17
The Path I Tread
An idea of simply a possibility slowly becomes a wish. It mutates into a desire which day by day intrudes so much it has become a necessity. Only internal, of course. Others outside are oblivious to its presence. And as it grows so too does the need for dissimulation, care and attention on all fronts. Nothing must escape. All must be smooth and untroubled on the surface. Unlike the child, who sooner rather than later betrays their harboured guilt and rage, the adult masks and papers over the tumult of their feelings. A need. A thing to do. Nothing more than one task among many. A riddance.
Think of a bluebottle buzzing round the room. Annoying but not surprising. A mundane occurrence. You open the window, and the chances are that if it isn’t gone immediately then after fruitless climbing the wrong way on the pane you’ll find it dead next morning on the sill. But if there are more and more that come regardless, and it’s no longer a question of flies but of a trapped bird that flaps its wings and caws. A bird that instead of escaping, flying away, elects to remain to sing by morning and to coo by night. A wondrous, dread companion whose message is ‘nurture me and I will strengthen you.’
I plan
ned. I visualised the lead up, the moment, the fatal moment. My traducer, my enemy, could see no change. Everything continued hunky-dory on its merry way as far as he was concerned. He now the doer, while I was passive. He now the doler out of scraps, whereas I had once been his benefactor. My rage hid behind timidity. My growing courage and resolve lurked behind sucking up. Their presence was beyond his comprehension. ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer,’ as they used to say in the old Mafia movies. And he lapped it up. My admiring attention. The hotel. Milly. The guests. Their little waywardnesses and their presents. The parties. And her, Lucy. All told in a matter of fact way to me, but gloatingly in the detail. That was my hardest task. Not to show what the very mention of her name was doing to me.
Time was running out. Action was needed. My action. I had to make my hidden desire an actual murder attempt and not simply an attempt but a successful, carefully planned, established fact.
Bedfont for the last time. The ongoing thrill of the intense joy experienced. Adrenalin pumping free. The hugged to oneself memory of the sheer bliss of hitting out and seeing the intended target crumble, his falling body simply asking to be hit again. Yet even at the height of ecstasy a judicious restraint had to be shown. Too much splattered blood might be dangerous. Sufficient unto the day, as someone, who now should be nameless if not forgotten, would say. Propriety. Knowing when to stop. ‘Let’s have a bit of propriety,’ as Mireille, that other self-deluding, nurturing earth-mother was wont to say, solemn-faced but tongue-in-cheek. ‘It might be all tits and bums, but no reason not to do it right with a slice of decorum.’ Well frankly, all that was bollocks then, and now of no significance whatsoever. Strange word though, propriety. Part proper. Part property. Silly cow. Stupid bitch. Phrases I can say with impunity. Because now my desire is fulfilled I am no-one. The path I tread is not the path I trod before. It has its complications, heaven knows, but for good or ill it takes me where I have to go.